The Weyrs of the Stars
by Gabion
Summary: What happens when Pern dragon-ships, flown by the mind of their dragons, encounter another colony set up after the Nathi wars? Will they combine, or fight, or go their separate ways?
1. Chapter 1

As ever, Pern is the property of AM and TM, but I do like to put a few twirls of icing on the cake.

I was musing on the two stories, _Starship One_ and _The Day Benden Went to War_, and I wondered about the far future of Pern, when they can mine the asteroid belt and go out into their star system. And then I wondered if they would ever encounter any other Earth colonies...

Saska looked up from her lab bench as the sound came again. That strange susurration of sound she had been hearing intermittently all her life, but this time it was stronger, louder.

Glancing around at the other workers, it was obvious no one else had heard anything, and she shrugged and bent over the microscope again.

Making notes on the keyboard, she felt her way towards a solution, a method she had once tried to describe to a professor, been thoroughly humiliated by his disbelief, and never mentioned again. But it worked for her, and it meant she was beginning to see the way the virus reproduced, and what was needed to choke it off.

Raising her head and blinking around, she thought someone had called her name.

"What?" she asked in irritation, and her colleagues also looked around.

"Someone called me," she said. "What d'you want?"

Ron shook his head. "Not me, m'dear. Too involved in this little nasty. Jo?"

The other lab worker shook her head. "Not me. Hearing things again, Saska?"

She did not reply, shrugging her shoulders, reviewing her notes. Her parents had landed her with a name from memories of Old Earth, Saskatchewan, and she hated it almost as much as the various contractions and nicknames she had attracted throughout her life.

"This one seems to latch onto prey animals through ingestion," she said at random. "The last one was a parasitic flying form, this one might be in vegetation."

"Precious little of that around us, except on the eco-deck - are you saying - it might be _in_ the eco-deck?"

Ron stood up and stared at her, came across the lab in a hurry and read her notes. Jo powered down her cutter and looked across as well.

"It's already in the eco-deck, you're saying?" Ron asked.

"There's something in there," she replied. "But I can't say it's a virus, nor if it would be deadly."

"Terrvert just spent umpty-billion credits building this base, to spread out into a colony," Ron said tensely. "And that eco-deck is state of the art, and you're saying it's contaminated? You'd better be sure of that!"

"I'm not sure of anything just yet," she replied, glancing at her notes. "But if there's a virus in there, it doesn't seem to want to do anything harmful."

"Can we request samples?" Jo asked. "I mean - if I ask for a bowl of salad, I can be sure it's gone through the zapper, can't I? No one eats raw leaves, do they?"

Ron and Saska looked at each other.

"I could request raw leaves," she said slowly. "I don't want to cause alarm, but a few leaves might be indicative."

"All right. A bowl of growing things, maybe?"

She nodded. "That would be good. It's all hydroponics in there, and the water is filtered and adjusted. Where does the water come from, Ron?"

"It's manufactured from the surface," he replied, gesturing to the metal walls surrounding the scientific bubble of life. "I doubt if anything could get through that process, Saska."

"Back on Old Earth, aeons ago, they thought they had life all sewn up," she replied absently, staring down the microscope again. "Then they discovered life could exist in places so weird it was beyond imagination. What if that poison out there is actually full of life?"

She moved the microscope into focus and out of it, not listening the silence in the room, but hearing once again someone call her name.

"Will you stop that?" she demanded irritably. "Who are you?"

_- My name is Laroth_

Saska reared upright so quickly she knocked the stool out from under her and in the process tangled her legs in it, and with a yelp fell to the ground with the high stool falling onto her. She heard the _crack_ of a bone, and yelped in real pain, trying to fend off the things that had come down with her. Her head hit the floor and she blacked out briefly.

_- I didn't mean to alarm you, please don't be frightened. Will you come and meet me?_

_Where are you?_

_- The big man wants to meet you also, he is excited about you._

"Saska? Are you all right? Are you awake? She hit her head pretty hard, doc."

She opened her eyes and stared up at Ron's inverted face, felt nauseated and sat up abruptly and vomited over the lab floor. Someone was holding her, and helping her, and she retched uselessly and gasped with pain as someone touched her wrist.

"Broken, undoubtedly. Yes, bring the trolley over here. No, don't try to sit up."

Robotic arms lifted her and placed her on a sickbay trolley,and Saska tried desperately to find that gentle voice in her mind, until someone put an anaesthetic in her and sent her down into sleep.

Saska woke in a sickbay bed with her arm tingling from the regrowth stimulant fed into the bone. The ache where she had struck her head had gone, and she felt no after-effects of the nausea.

Lying there, she looked around the sickbay. It was not somewhere she came often, although she had been here to be immunised against the last disease to strike the colony. Thinking about that, she wondered again if the atmosphere of this world was viable to some form of life. It seemed inconceivable, but over the years since its discovery, the colonists and scientists had had to battle with all kinds of diseases. In this far-flung corner of a forgotten star system, they were finding that erecting an eco-dome or two, mining the resources, feeding back into the system and receiving their credit rewards, was more problematic than usual.

"Hi there, Saska."

She looked up as Ron came around the screens. He looked at the monitors and nodded.

"You look OK. The doctors were furious you'd been put under, by the way."

"I react badly to anaesthetics, but that damned robot was too quick for me to stop it," she replied. "How long have I been out?"

"Two days," he said with relish. "And on life support for a while."

She stared at him in stupefied amazement.

"Two days? Two - whole - days? What about my work?"

"I closed down what I could, saved your notes." He hesitated, and she sighed in frustration.

"Jo's gone ahead with my idea and taken it on as her own?"

"Afraid so. I did point out it was your initial idea, but she's running with it."

"I hope she's being careful, is all I can say."

"Look on the bright side! You're going on R&R."

"I don't need R&R! I'm perfectly OK."

"It's either that, or they go probing into you to find out why you're allergic to anaesthetic," he said with a grin, and put a bowl onto the side table. "I fetched in some fruit. Zapped, not raw."

"Thanks."

He sobered. "Saska - you seemed to think someone was speaking to you. Do you often feel like that?"

She frowned at him. "Why d'you want to know?"

"Don't go defensive on me." He pulled up a chair and sat down, studying her. "D'you know where we came from? This colony specifically?"

"Yes, from A-Zed-One, the last space station before the vacuum," she replied sarcastically. "Which was a damned sight more civilised than this hole in space, I can tell you!"

"And before that?"

Saska hesitated, slowly pleating the bed cover, listening to the comforting sounds of the monitors telling her she was still alive.

"Benden is the name of the R&R planet," she said at last. "That's where my parents are, y'know."

"Yes, I do know. Doing sterling work at cataloguing and analysing the flora and fauna of Benden. And before that?"

"Oh Ron, get to the point!" Saska said angrily. "Why d'you need me to rehearse it?"

"Because I wondered if you knew where we came from, our first foray into space," he replied.

"Old Earth?"

"After that."

"Terrvert was a colony founded after the Nathi wars, on a planet congenial for humankind. From there, one space ship went out to find more worlds, and the rest is - history."

"What part of history were you taught?"

Saska stared at him.

"I do know the rest of it, Ron, so why the portentous frown?"

"So many of the scientists here, and the colonists, don't seem to know, or care. I don't know why that should be, but I make it a purpose in life to ask people, and prod them into looking it up. Our friend Jo, for instance, doesn't know, or doesn't care. Oh, we all get taught it, but so many seem to want to forget our partners in space, and what is, when you come down to it, a fairly spectacular way of getting from planet to planet, on dragon back."


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the first reviews! _Weyrship One_, of course, I should have looked back and found the title properly.

Saska leaned her head back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

"I don't come from Pern," she murmured. "I come from a Terrvert world, and so do my parents. All right, I grant you this world will have a dragon-base - perhaps even a Weyr - and dragon-ships visiting, but Terrvert itself was founded by a different set of colonists."

"And you can hear voices in your mind, which is fairly unusual for a Terrvertian," Ron said, and she could image the smile on his face.

"Benden is named from Pern," she said at random.

"Yes. One of the Weyrs of Pern."

"Does it still exist?"

"Oh yes." He stood up and leaned across, and unexpectedly dropped a kiss on her hair. "Go back to sleep, Saska, and I'll see if I can break you out of this place soonest."

"I hate white sheets," she said at random. "At home they were all home spun and woven, and a lovely colour."

"And so they will be again," he said, and Saska listened to the door open and close, the distinctive hiss of disinfectant against anything Ron might have carried in with him.

"And there's a red sun on Benden as well," she said aloud, and realised that she missed that slowly dying sun more than anything else.

The following day the doctor discharged her and issued her with a medi-flash so that no one would pump anaesthetic into her unknowing.

"What happens if I fall down and it's under me?" she asked childishly, fingering the pendant around her neck.

"It gives off a micro-signal to any medical personnel equipped with the necessary equipment."

"All right. Thanks. I don't need to go to Benden, you know, I can carry on with my work here."

"As far as I can see, there is no work here," he replied briskly. "The lab has specified it needs no more than two workers, and there isn't anything else that remotely resembles your specialisation."

"I could clean the tanks in the eco-deck."

"Robotically controlled. You'd take in too many life forms. We all carry them around with us all the time, but that eco-deck doesn't have any."

Saska stood up and picked up her discharge papers, smiling at him when she wanted to shout at him, and walked out, nodding to the receptionist and nurses who were hanging around the coffee machine. The thought of coffee turned her stomach, and she realised she was far too tense to do any good to herself or others. She set off, therefore, to walk around the dome, a walk she often took, around the inner fortifications, near the ducts where the robotic cleaners kept constant check against damage to the outer shell of the dome.

"Like an egg," she said aloud, staring out of the clouded panels that shielded the fierce light from a young blue sun. "An egg we're ready to break out of, but not here, not on this place."

She turned and exited the walkway and came to one of the canteens. She did not want food or drink, but there were people here, talking, doing ordinary mundane things. None of them had come from Benden, she realised, but she had known some of them on A-Zed-One where she had gone when she left the University on Benden. She fetched the obligatory coffee from the machine and sat down to scan the newsvids.

What would it be like to ride a dragon, she wondered. Not just sit in the bowels of a ship the dragons were moving with their minds, but actually to ride a dragon.

- _the big man says you are welcome to ride dragons_.

_Laroth?_

- _are you coming to see us? You have been very sick and I couldn't hear you properly_.

_yes I was sick. Can I ride you?_

- _anyone can ride a dragon_.

"Hullo, Saska."

She looked up sharply as Jo sat down opposite her. They stared at each other in silence.

"Sorry," Jo said abruptly. "They've credited it to me, now. Nothing I can do."

"Make sure of your every step," Saska replied. "Don't take any shortcuts, Jo, because that's how the last viral invasion happened. And write it all down."

Jo studied her curiously.

"Don't you mind?"

"Well - yes of course I do - but I'm not a pure researcher like you. I get paid, a pittance admittedly, to do this, Jo, I'm still on a retainer from the University on Benden, and I have that cushion."

"They're sending you back, aren't they? What's Benden like?"

"Didn't you come through it on the way here?"

Jo shook her head. "I came from the other direction, from Terrvert Three through A-Zed-One to reach here."

"I don't remember the Terrvert world where I was born, my parents went to Benden when I was just barely walking."

"But you lived out in the open?"

"Yes. We had a small dome to live in and do the science, but I grew up in the woods of Benden."

"So - more like a colonist than a scientific type?"

Saska smiled. "I suppose you could say so. You came through Terrvert Three - are those Terrvert worlds - alive?"

Jo stared into her coffee, and then nodded.

"Alive and full of our kind of life," she said. "There's not an inch of a Terrvert world that hasn't been cultivated and terraformed and shaped by us. This place will be the same, sucked dry."

Saska watched her sip her coffee.

"If it bothers you so much, why don't you protest about it?"

Jo shrugged, staring at the walls as if she could see outside.

"I don't know that it bothers me that much," she admitted. "I was born and brought up in eco-domes, more sophisticated than this one, that's for sure, but in the end, that's the way the worlds are, with some of them beginning by being totally enclosed like this. There aren't enough free worlds with the right mix for humans to live, not like we were told to expect at school and University."

"Just the right air, just the right water, just the right distance," Saska said with a rueful smile, and Jo nodded, crushed her cup into the recycler and left the canteen. Saska watched her go, and shook her head. She was seconded from Benden University on a tiny bursary, it was true, but she still needed to find a decent paying job that would enable her to pay off her Committee loans at more than the speed she was managing at the moment.

She saw Ron come in, glancing behind him as if he had glimpsed Jo, and then the lab worker came across and sat down opposite her.

"So they let you go?"

"Couldn't keep me," she replied lightly.

"And you're off back to Benden?"

"There's not a lot I can do there either, with my particular specialisation," she admitted. "I'll probably go back to University and retrain at something a bit more generalised."

"Have you told many people you can hear dragons?" he asked and Saska stared at him in shock.

"Hear - dragons - of course I don't hear dragons!"

"What else is talking in your head, then, unless you suffer from a particularly spectacular form of Schizophrenia?"

Saska blinked and looked away, but she could sense Ron was still friendly and concerned.

"I didn't know they were dragons," she said at last. "Why are you interested? This isn't a Pern colony world, why should I think they're dragons?"

"The Committee asked for a dragon-base to be built here," he pointed out. "So dragons do come and go, and you can hear them, like you could hear on them on Benden, I'd suppose?"

"I never heard them making speech before, there was just a sound in my head. Why should I suddenly start hearing speech?"

"I'm hoping the answer to that is on Benden. The two colonies went in very different directions once they were founded, but they set out with the same purpose, to get away from the wars and start their own societies."

"Terrvert didn't have Thread?"

She heard an odd rumble in her mind as she said that, and a sudden flashing image of something grey and glistening, and shook her head to get rid of it.

"No, they didn't. Terrvert wasn't such a bargain as Pern when it came to agriculture and industrial processes, which is how they came to be such specialists at terraforming."

"Didn't that put Pern at a disadvantage when the two cultures met? I mean - what amount of science do you need to build a dragon-ship?"

"Metal," Ron said at once. "Wiring. Electricity. Air filters. Nothing the Pernese had developed in their two thousand years of isolation from AIVAS."

"And when that did reconnect? They took what they wanted? But both Pernese colony worlds are under yellow suns and have a breathable atmosphere."

"Yes, because that's what the dragons were looking for. I don't think the average Pernese will have much concept of science as we term it, but they have the basics of industry now."

Saska sipped her coffee and thought about that, aware that Ron was watching her. He had an agenda, she was sure of that, otherwise he would not be seeking her out; several years older and much more highly qualified, Ron was still an oddity on a new colony world.

"But - we don't have contact with Old Earth? Neither set ever went back?"

Ron stared thoughtfully at her.

"How would they do that?"

"If you had a picture, a dragon could go there," she replied. "Isn't that the essence of training a dragon, that you teach it the co-ordinates by means of pictures and star patterns?"

"That was how Lessa brought the Weyrs forward."

"That - is so far in their past - you're right, no one here ever mentions Pern!"

"But on Benden there are dragons," he murmured. "You may never have seen them, but Benden is one of the contact points, one of the vectors of the dragon-ships. I'd like you to go and meet them."

Saska stared around the canteen.

"I think I might go mad if I lived in one of these domes all my life," she said at random. "All right, Benden is a red dwarf world, but at least the wind blows there, and there's weather."

"There was no weather on A-Zed-One," he responded with a smile.

"That was a space station with no pretensions to being anything else, a staging post if you like. This place - they're going to build more domes, aren't they? That's the reason for the sudden influx of engineers?"

"Yes, another dome or even two. There's riches in the rocks, you see, and you can mine it from the domes and ship it out."

"By dragon-ship?"

Ron shook his head slowly. "Very occasionally, they might touch here and exchange goods and news. I don't know what's happening to the dragon-ships, Saska, if they're getting fewer, if there's a reason they don't touch the Terrvert Vector Points very often, but I was going to ask you - if you go to Benden - if you could find out."

"For you?"

"For me and the interested parties I represent," Ron admitted.

Saska nodded.

"I wondered why you were always asking questions," she said. "All right, I'll report back to you if I find anything out of the ordinary - but I doubt if there is anything very wrong - perhaps the dragons don't come this way because it's inimical to them, have you thought of that?"

"They can move ships," he replied. "Move ships with all the air they need to live and function. Perhaps you could let me know?"

"I won't spy for you," she replied bluntly. "Anything I find out, I'll tell it out loud. I'm not going to be party to some covert operation, Ron."

He shrugged as they both stood up and moved to the exit.

"I told them that would be your answer, but I'd be grateful if you'd tell me as well as anyone else."

"I can do that, certainly," she replied.

"And let me know what colour that dragon is, in your head," he said with a laugh and a wave, striding off down the corridor.

"Green," she said aloud. "All the colours of green you ever saw, Ron, if you ever bothered to look."


	3. Chapter 3

I hope to make some contrast between the two sets of colonists, but as we all know, human nature will be the same whatever the circumstances.

Despite her grumbles, Saska knew she was looking forward to going home. Benden was the place she remembered best, although she had a few images of other places she thought might be recollections of previous homes, and a tall man who might have been a relative. Saska shrugged mentally; they were her memories and she was entitled to keep them private.

"_Please strap in for the transfer moment_," the intercom intoned. Saska moved her reader pad from her knees, fastened her seat straps and glanced around to make sure nothing could come loose. She had made the transfer from the colony domes in a small shuttle across the continents to the larger Vector Point established within the crater of an extinct volcano, next to the Terrvert space port. From that world the dragon-ships had made two small flux-transfers, as Terrvert preferred to call them, to other Vector Points. Those short drops into _between_ were nothing compared to the drop into _between_ that would bring them out at Benden.

The man next to her had been asleep the whole of the previous two hours of normal flight whilst the dragon-mind had been resting, and the flight attendant leaned across to make sure the man was strapped in.

"Some people can sleep through anything," she murmured with a professional smile, and Saska nodded as she watched the cabin lights dim. She could sense the tension going up a notch or two, and someone called out, was hushed, but then called out again. This was going to be a difficult transfer if someone was awake and panicked, but two flight attendants were moving down the opposite aisle, and Saska relaxed her shoulders, closed her eyes and started counting slowly.

"10, 20, 30, 40, 50..."

There was an imperceptible judder, a sensation of freezing darkness and non-being, and then warmth again as the dragon-ship came into the safety of the port.

"600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, ready or not here I come."

Saska opened her eyes to find the man seated beside her watching her with a curious look on his face.

"Shouldn't that be 1,2,3?" he asked.

Saska reddened. "It's an old game."

"I know. We usually counted from one to one hundred rather than in tens!"

"There weren't that many hiding places, then?"

"A whole world," he said lightly. "But rather a lot of us to hide in the best places."

Saska nodded. "There were only ever three of us, my parents and I, and Benden isn't known for its hiding places."

"True enough," he said with a nod, beginning to gather his things together. "I'm K'nitt."

"You're a dragon rider?"

He paused, glancing at her again.

"Yes. I've been on a fact finding mission, but I'll be glad to get back to the Weyr on Benden."

"Not Benden Weyr?"

K'nitt shook his head. "Benden Weyr's back on Pern. This is just called the Weyr on Benden, where the dragons are gathered."

"I've been on Planet G-Ed-4, but I'm on a spot of R&R."

"Were you researching stuff on the planet? That's the one with the new mineral resources?"

"I was doing research, but I'm a biologist, so I was studying the way the native diseases might transmute into the colony."

K'nitt stared at her and frowned.

"I thought you were all under eco-domes? Nothing could get in or out?"

Saska smiled as she gathered up her possessions, and unstrapped herself. "Don't you believe it. Life can get in anywhere, I've found, and can take the most unexpected forms."

They stood up as the green lights went on, and K'nitt had to bend his head to get out of the seats, but he had the advantage of being able to reach up to the lockers and empty them, not just of his things, and those of Saska, but with a good-natured smile, and a joke, for the people around them.

"Should've seen me before I started pumping iron!" he said cheerfully, and then they were shuffling forward to the exit points, and down the steps to reach ground level, the dragon-ship having landed in a specially built hub.

Saska wondered if her parents would be there to greet her, or whether they were hundreds or thousands of mils away on the other side of the planet, documenting some new variation of the evolution of types under a red sun.

"That was quite a grimace," K'nitt said softly as they exited. "Not looking forward to sun, sea, and sand?"

"On Benden? Do me a favour!"

He laughed and shook his head. "We've installed a pool at the Weyr, waves and sand and all. Let me know where you're staying and I'll rustle up a pass for you."

Saska glanced at him, at the way he was very definitely staying beside her, and she smiled and eased away, swinging her bag symbolically between them.

"And what colour dragon do you ride? Or should I guess? Brown or bronze?"

His smile slipped for a second, and then he smiled more ruefully.

"Is it that obvious? I ride a brown, Sosteth. I was serious, I will get you a pass if you want one."

Saska shook her head.

"I'll find out what my regime is going to be first."

She took an extra step away, and found the booth she wanted, handing over her documents.

"Doctor Freeman? You're expected, there's a car for you. Jon! Escort Doctor Freeman, please."

Surprised, and startled, Saska glanced at the information desk but she could not read the security-warped messages, and then the young man Jon was beside her and waving her forward to go out of the complex and into the reddish light. Saska glanced back in time to see the bulk of the dragon-ship being scaffolded for maintenance before its next trip out under the power of telekinesis.

"This is our car. Tev is the driver."

Saska nodded to the driver and strapped herself in as Jon dealt with her luggage. The car left the commercial port district, driving across the open park area, and into the city proper. As on all Terrvert worlds, this was called City One, as the main city on the other continent was called City Two. Saska leaned forward to see if there were any changes in the skyline, but the swooping levels of offices and homes looked the same, with the high rise maglev train snaking through the neighbourhoods.

"Have you been away long, Doctor?" Jon asked diffidently. "I wondered if you see anything different about the place?"

Saska shook her head. "It looks much the same, Jon - may I call you Jon? I was brought up further out to the west, and I spent a long time with my parents on scientific trips."

"I've read all your father's papers on the native species," Jon said. "I'm majoring in plant exo-biology."

"There's plenty of scope for that, with Terrvert expanding all over the place."

"And Pern," Jon said unexpectedly. "You'll be able to catch up on the news, but the High Council on Pern has posted notice of a new planet they think will be viable for settlement."

Saska stared at him in astonishment.

"A - new planet? I thought Pern - well - no matter what I thought."

Jon nodded. "Everyone in Terrvert territories thinks Pern just concentrates on the mechanics of getting the ships from place to place. I don't think it's as simple as that, I don't think the High Council sits meekly waiting to be told what to do."

Saska thought of her lessons on the history of Pern, and agreed with him on that, as the young man fell silent and looked embarrassed at perhaps having spoken out of turn.

The car hissed to a stop at the familiar level and Jon hauled her bags out, and then jumped back into the car and left. Saska stood for a moment before recalling the memory sequence and pressed buttons to open the door, stepping through into the cool greenness of the apartment.

"There you are, dear," her mother said, looking out of the kitchen door. "Put your things away and have a shower, I'm nearly ready to dish up."

"Mother? What are you doing here? I thought - you and Dad - would be away - "

"He's watching the vids."

Saska stared in bewilderment at the closing kitchen door, and wondered uneasily if there was something wrong with her that the medics had left unmentioned. She hefted her bags and made her way to her room, unchanged since she had left it four years ago. She had a shower, and changed into a sea green kaftan, finding a long scarf to belt around herself, and then went across to the sitting room. Like all the apartments in the block, this one was compact, but cleverly designed so that no door looked directly at another, giving an illusion of space and privacy to each room.

"Hello Dad."

"Hullo dear. How are you?"

She kissed his cheek, ruffled his sparse hair and sat down, looking around the room.

"You've repainted?"

"We like the cool look, but yes, it was looking a bit scuffed and tired."

"And those plants?"

They both looked at the glass case containing a plant with delicate blue blooms.

"I found it out in the wilds. So far it doesn't seem to object to being shifted from red light towards yellow."

"It's beautiful. What does it do?"

Her father smiled. "I've taught you too well. I'm hoping to get a medicine out of it, but that's long term."

They went into the dining room and her mother served the meal, and they sat in a companionable silence as they ate, something Saska realised she had missed in the easygoing free-for-all in the canteens she had inhabited for the last few years. Only when she had cleared the table for her mother, and come back, did her father pour a second drink for them all and look expectantly at her.

"We were only told you had broken your wrist in a fall and couldn't prevent an anaesthetic," her mother said by way of explanation. "They were offhand about it, but we thought it would be nice to have a trip to the City to make sure you're all right."

Saska shook her head.

"I heard a dragon," she said bluntly. "Speaking in my mind. I was so startled I jumped up and tangled myself in the stool, and knocked myself out."

"A dragon. A genuine Pernese dragon?"

"So I surmised."

"From that distance? But no - there's a Vector Point established there, isn't there? Still - to hear a dragon all the way around the world - "

Saska shrugged. "What's distance to a dragon? Isn't that the whole point of Pernese history and the way dragons were structured? They can speak to anyone anywhere?"

"I'm not sure anyone else has made the corollary," her father admitted.

"Have you been hearing them for a long time?" her mother asked. "I remember you had some vivid dreams as a child, but the doctors thought they were normal flying dreams."

Saska blinked, and then took a sip of her wine.

"That's right," she said. "I'd forgotten them - or buried them. I think I've been hearing the dragons all my life, but very faintly. Then suddenly this green - Laroth - spoke directly into my mind."

"A green? What did she say?"

"She said the big man was very excited and wanted to meet me."

"I should think he would be excited," her father replied. "I don't know of any Terrvert native who's heard the dragons of Pern!"

"There must be others," Saska said. "But they probably don't recognise it, or they deny it, or just ignore it. I don't know why I suddenly heard it as speech, when all I've heard in the past has been something like the waves on the shore - a sort of hissing in and out."

"I'm glad you never mentioned that to any doctors," her mother said fervently.

"They gave me enough grief anyway," Saska replied absently, and then looked around at her parents, at their startlement. An awkward pause fell, and then Saska sighed out.

"All right, that slipped out. It was just a few pupils, and a couple of teachers, who seemed to think I must be - strange - with you two out in the field all the time, and Dad's hobbies of making little things that fly."

"I thought - that was in the past - that sort of prejudice."

"Can't be," Saska replied. "We're all humans, to some degree, and human nature hasn't changed since we climbed out of the jungle, I don't suppose. The primitive is still there in our brains, however deeply we've buried it."

"Are you going to meet with this dragon and her rider?" her mother asked.

"I will do eventually, I expect."

"Can you hear her now?"

"No. Just that vague murmur."

"They're probably all asleep," her father reminded her. "Did you hear the dragon that was guiding the ship?"

"No. According to the history, not every person on Pern can hear dragons, and not all dragon riders can hear more than their own dragons, most of the time."

"Moreta and Lessa could hear them all."

Saska recalled the songs about those two, and nodded.

"So they could. It's possible, of course, that all the dragons could make themselves heard to all the people, but I doubt if they'd want that many voices in their heads. In the first days, they had to concentrate on flaming Thread."

As she said it, she had that image again of a silvery rain twisting and writhing through the sky, and gave an atavistic shudder of horror, grabbed her wine glass and took a drink.

"Well, I think I'll switch on the news," her father said. "There's something about Pern, isn't there?"

His wife nodded. "Something about the High Council. I'll just put the dishes away."

Saska went through to the kitchen to join her, slipping the dishes out of the washer and into the cupboards. In other apartments the dishes might be recycled endlessly, here her mother took pride in the simple artisan dishes she made herself.

"I thought you were part of a project," her mother murmured.

"One of my fellow workers took it over, and the Committee chucked me out as surplus to requirements," Saska admitted. "I got across one of the head boffins, I think, although nothing was ever said."

"Human nature again," her mother said with a shake of the head. "There, that's done."

They came and sat down, and the news flashed up a stylised image of Pern, and the newsreader rehashed the statement from the High Council that a new planet had been observed and was under investigation by probes.

"Is Pern in partnership with Terrvert and able to use our science?" Saska asked. "I never bothered to think it through, before?"

"We're autonomous colonies," her father replied, switching to a music channel. "We work together in some ways, trading minerals and ores and so on. And of course the use of the dragon-ships. I don't think much of our technology is evident on Pern itself, because the First Settlers set up their Charter to make the whole place low level tech and mostly agrarian. That had to change with Thread, and changed again when they rediscovered their AIVAS, but the Pern High Council very rarely requests exchanges of knowledge with the Terrvert Committee."

"But the Weyr here on Benden - they must use our technology because of living under a red sun."

"Strangely enough, the dragons don't seem to be bothered about the red light."

"Have you been there?"

Her father looked across in mild surprise.

"Of course I have. I was the one who recommended that particular place, that enormous rocky island being suitable to excavation into weyrs. They're totally self sufficient in energy, of course, and probably mostly grow their own food by now, under glass. I haven't been there for quite some time."

"Do you know the dragon riders?"

"I don't recall a green called Laroth, but she might be a young dragon."

"No, I didn't get the impression of youth," Saska replied slowly. "Nor great age either, but just a general air of - competence - and some excitement she could speak to me."

"Yes, I should think that goes without saying," her mother replied. "It could be, now they know you're here, love, that the dragon riders will be paying you a visit before long."


	4. Chapter 4

Hope you are enjoying this excursion into a different aspect of Pern. This isn't canon at the moment, but I will take you to meet some dragons in due course.

When Saska woke the next day she spent some time revelling in the familiarity of her surroundings. This was home, the way everything was arranged, the very cool neutral colours splashed with her own personal collection of trivia.

That stone had come from the far side of Benden, from a shore lapped by an acid green inland sea where it seemed impossible for life to flourish, yet her father had very gently turned over a stone and shown her the mass of life underneath it. Not the stone she had in her collection, that one had come from an area devoid of life; her father had allowed her to use his spectrograph to make sure of that before she would pick up the stone.

That piece of inexpert weaving had come from something she had seen in a vid, and tried out with sticks and bits of vine stem; her mother had encased it in an inert dome to preserve it for her.

Over there, her collection of hand copied texts; she had seen something about it and wanted to try it out, and spent months laboriously copying from the computer interface before tiring of that craze.

Saska came out of bed and peered at herself in the mirror.

_- you look lovely_

Saska jumped into the air and whirled around, and then looked back at her reflection in the mirror.

"Laroth?"

_- yes I am at the Weyr. The big man is very excited about you_

"So you keep saying. Do you know the dragon that transported the ship I came in?"

- _Modeth is a very powerful bronze. He has never flown me_.

Saska had a dizzying image of two dragons flying unaided and intertwined, and found she was blushing.

"Who are you talking to?" her father called from the corridor.

"The green dragon Laroth."

"You shouldn't need to speak out loud, she should be able to hear you if you project to her."

"That's right, I did that before."

Saska finished dressing, and then came out to find some breakfast in the kitchen, mixing berries with cereal, and pouring tea.

"That's better! I've avoided tea since I left here."

"I could have sent you some," her mother said. "Disguised as research material."

Saska laughed and shook her head. "There was a lot of that going on," she admitted.

Her father looked up from the papers he was shuffling together.

"This green dragon - Laroth - did she give any indication about you visiting the Weyr?"

"No. She just said the big man was excited. That's all she says about him."

"Hmm. We might go and visit, I think. I could do with checking on how the imposition of an alien life form has impacted on the evolution of the place."

"And I could do with some nice shards of black glass to polish and put into my mobiles," her mother said with a nod. "Good. We aren't expected back at the project for a while, so I think we might just take a little trip out together."

Saska looked from one to the other with fond exasperation. This was the way all their expeditions started, and yet somehow at the end of it there was always food and clothing, shelter, and the scientific instruments they needed.

"You've some messages, by the way," her father said, indicating the computer interface. Saska switched it on and checked her social pages, ignoring most of the comments, glancing at the appeals and chain letters, and then clicked into her mail account.

There was a note from Ron hoping she was OK. Saska sent him a brief answer to thank him, and then read the other messages from old college friends, one from a girl she had met briefly on A-Zed-One. She did not make friends easily, but she replied to that message, reading about her teaching classes.

"Anything interesting?" her father asked.

"No, not really. I made some friends at Uni, Dad, but I've not kept up with them somehow. They were all very - earnest."

He laughed and shook his head. "That's not what Uni is for! Earnest is for when you're trying to get a job, because you know you frivvled your time away at Uni."

Saska grinned at him. "Did you frivvle, Dad?"

"Oh, I was definitely head frivvler in my year," he replied, and Saska made a face at him and closed the computer down, realising that she was one of the very few people who did that; most people kept their personal messaging interfaces open all the time and responded to them in real time.

By midday they were travelling out of the city. This was not wilderness anymore; the area around the City was intensively farmed under domes, recycling in the efficient manner that marked all of Terrvert's planetary ventures. Nothing was wasted, and nothing was left over, Saska thought, staring out at the expanse of domes. Thinking of her father's laughing comments, she decided that if there was a frivolous side to the colonies Terrvert founded, she had yet to experience them.

"That's why I left everything in my room," she said aloud, involuntarily, and her mother glanced across at her.

"Your room is your own space, that's one of the founding rules of Terrvert," she replied. "Anything outside is fair game for the recyclers, but inside - you can pile it full of the most dreadful things, no one can gainsay you."

"Is it the same on Pern?"

"I doubt it. They have different rules, I'm sure."

Saska thought about two different colonies suddenly finding each other in the midst of space.

"Was it a shock, d'you think? Meeting up?"

"I shouldn't image it was very easy," her father replied. "They both knew they'd come from Old Earth, of course, but from completely different directions and with different aims, one as a semi-agrarian low tech response to some pretty dreadful fighting in the Nathi wars, and other as a scientific response to that war."

"That was what founded both colonies?"

"So they say. The Pernese had history, medicine, agriculture, science, all the basic instructions built into their AIVAS of course, as Terrvert did. The colonies took completely different courses but then - a dragon-ship touched down on a Terrvert world having detected speech patterns the dragon recognised."

"And the rest is history?"

Her father laughed and shook his head. "We are history, my dear, all of us with our own stories to tell. Now then - look over there - just rising over the horizon - that's the Weyr of Benden."


	5. Chapter 5

I promised you dragons! Thanks for the reviews and the follows on my story, it is an encouragement to know someone is reading my little excursion from canon.

Saska peered into the dull red light of the sun, and saw an outline on the near horizon, a jagged lump of rock. As they came closer, she was aware of the size of the outlying island, how huge it really was, discerning some of the dark holes she presumed to be weyrs. The red sunlight glittered on domes where the dragon riders and their support crews must grow their food and recycle their water from the green sea surrounding them. Whilst Benden was not inimical to human life, it certainly made it more interesting than some of the other Terrvert worlds, because the terraforming was new and raw on this world, and concentrated on the second continent. Measured by the lifetime of the slow burning red dwarf sun, Terrvert scientists were confident they could eventually make the whole world entirely habitable.

The car stopped at a complex of buildings put down in a seemingly haphazard fashion, but each of them had a frontage onto a street, and appeared to be a shop, and they each had a garden dome on the roof.

"Welcome to Lastchance," Saska's father said dryly as he powered down and reached for his id cards. A tall man in black clothing came over, and glanced at the id cards.

"All three of the Doctors Freeman. Are we honoured?" he drawled, in a cadence Saska found unfamiliar yet with an echo of something she had once heard.

"That I wouldn't know, chief. It depends if you read my message."

"Oh, was that what flashed up on the screen? OK, you can go ahead."

Saska touched her mother's arm, and pointed. Up above the island, shapes darted and dipped.

"Are those - dragons?"

"I'd think so, dear."

The tall man escorted them into the nearest building and studied Saska with open interest.

"You're the young lady who can hear the dragons?"

"I can hear one of them," Saska amended. "If it is a dragon, and not some schizophrenic figment of my mind."

The man grinned at her. "Oh, you can hear them all right, if that's your reaction. It's quite a stunner, isn't it? When you hear them clearly for the first time?"

"Are you - Pernese?"

"Yup. I'm a facilitator here on Benden, I deal with the trading aspect of the interaction of both colonies."

"What do you trade?"

"Food," he replied. "Yes, we can grow our own here, but we can get fresh stuff from Pern in a flash, as well."

"But Pern - it's - a long way away - " Saska finished lamely, realising what she was saying.

"Yes I know." He came and took her arm. "Let me show you, all right? You can call me P'til, by the way, rider of bronze Panath."

She nodded, allowing him to lead her, although she detached her arm without giving offence. She studied the large map on the wall of the sitting area.

"That's like the one as we had at school, but - skewed - more to Pern colonies?"

"It's a variation of all the star maps, because that's what most people can relate to. The dimensions aren't real, of course. This is Rukbat, with its family of planets and moons and asteroids. Those have been progressively mined since the first dragon-ship was made. That's been a boon, because Pern is light on minerals and ores. The moons of these two outer planets are also mined. These two orange dots are the outer worlds the dragon-ships found, after probes sent back accurate enough images for the dragons to be sure they could make landfall."

Saska shivered at the thought of that wild venture. Terrvert had sent out probes, and unmanned craft to make their first bases, Pern had sent dragons and riders.

"Terrvert is over here on this schematic, in Cor Caroli, and these are its three colonies." He touched a blue starred shape. "This is Touch Base, where the two first met."

"Have you been there?"

P'til shook his head. "No need to, really. Where you were studying on that new planet could be another Base, so they say, if the High Council is agreeable to that expansion, and it's safe for dragons and people."

Saska nodded. This was talk she was familiar with, the way Terrvert expanded its colonies. What she was not familiar with was the thought of sentient beings, linked in their minds, venturing out into the vacuum of space.

- _it's not at all dangerous. Are you coming to see me? My weyr is very clean, I have brushed it all out for you_.

Saska jumped and stared wildly around. P'til looked at her, his eyes seeming to come back into focus.

"Oh my! An invitation to a weyr! That doesn't happen very often, but then Laroth - pushy, very pushy."

"Like rider like dragon?" her father asked dryly.

P'til laughed. "Oh yes, M'tin is very pushy, but he's not Laroth's rider."

"I know that. He's the rider of Wildeth, a blue."

"Yes. I'd forgotten you knew him. I wonder if that's why Laroth can communicate with your daughter? Or why they've started to talk?"

Saska stared at the two of them in bewilderment.

"You know a dragon rider, Dad?"

"I know M'tin, yes, he usually ferries supplies for us when we're out on project work. It can be a lot more reliable than a drone."

"I never saw him?"

"It's not generally done, and enlisting the help of a dragon rider isn't usually part of a project's budget. M'tin and I got to know each other when I was helping with the Weyr, although he wasn't a rider then, just another snotty nosed kid getting in my way."

"Like me," P'til said with a grin. "Then we went back to Pern and Impressed."

A shadow of wonder passed across his face and then he smiled at Saska, who smiled back involuntarily, and wondered why she had done so.

"Can't you Impress here?"

P'til shook his head. "No queens are allowed to travel _between_ the colony worlds," he said. "It's deemed too dangerous for them."

"Lessa took Ramoth back four hundred turns."

"And that nearly killed them both."

Saska studied him, running his words through her mind. There was some nuance in there, not a lie, but a prevarication. She did not respond, however, or ask any more questions, instead studying the lists of produce traded between the worlds via the dragon-ships, and wondering how she was going to get out to the Weyr, and if indeed she was going to meet "_the big man who was very excited_".

Saska was absorbed in reading the detailed ship logs when her father came back in.

"We've clearance to go to the Weyr," he told her. "What's so fascinating about those lists? Anything I've missed?"

"I doubt it," she replied with a smile. "I was just looking at the things passing through to Pern from this Weyr and beyond. Jewels, for one thing. Why such large perfect sapphires?"

"To make a journeyman into a Master," he replied. "I think good quality gems might be getting scarce by now, and since the founding of Pern, a sapphire is for a Master."

"That would make sense, then."

"Don't forget Pern took a different direction - the set up is completely opposite, in a way, to the Terrvert set up."

"But they each had AIVAS?"

"Yes, but Pern lost their AIVAS for a long time, long enough to develop into something - unique."

"I sensed that right from the first time we were taught about it, and about our common heritage."

"There's quite a long distance in time since the Nathi wars."

"Yes. In those three thousand years, Terrvert founded three colonies and a few space stations. Pern made two ventures in only the last three hundred years of Thread-free existence."

"Not many people remember that," her father remarked. "Once the planets were found, and the dragons were confident enough with their identification marks, their initial jumps were practically FTL."

"Pretty amazing all round, given that they came from - well - from pre-industrial to space flight so quickly."

Saska frowning, however, as she closed the interface and followed her father outside and stood looking at the Weyr.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "I've learned your instincts are sometimes uncanny, love. What is it?"

"I - don't know. I mean - I don't know that there's anything wrong, but something doesn't add up about the whole situation. Nothing I can point to and say - that's wrong - or going wrong. My instincts have tripped me up before, Dad. Like not getting that scholarship."

Her father made a grimace.

"That thing! Yes, I made an almighty fuss about that, but you'd moved on to other studies by then, and I think in the end those were better?"

"Yes, I expect they were. I can't tell, can I? How do we get to the Weyr? Is Mother coming?"

"They've found her a whole rock pile to fossick through, so she's happy. We're not on dragon back, I'm afraid! More prosaic - the car's here."

They climbed into the car and were driven into a tunnel that extended from the shore under the sea and out again into the Weyr. Saska was laughing as she climbed out onto an open platform with paths leading to the growing areas. Overhead a few dragons still circled lazily on the updrafts.

"And here I was thinking there might be something exotic about it!"

"Not much exotic about Terrvert," her father said cheerfully. "I don't think they do humour and satire either."

A young man was coming to greet them, and be greeted.

"This is M'tin, rider of blue Wildeth. How are you, M'tin?"

"I'm fine, Prof, thanks. I've been off planet for a while - is it true your daughter can hear dragons? How are you, Doctor?"

"Er - Saska will be fine," she replied, almost overwhelmed by his boyish enthusiasm, responding to his wide beaming smile. "You don't captain a dragon-ship do you?"

"Oh no, only browns and bronzes can do that. But I've been helping out up there."

He jerked a thumb upwards and they looked up to see the sparkle of a space station like a star in the red sky.

"The dragons are getting set to follow a probe," M'tin continued in a more serious tone. "I've been helping get supplies ready for the first jump."

"That's true, then? There's a new viable planet?" Saska's father asked.

"So the High Council determined. But you want to meet Laroth, I expect? She's been insupportable since she discovered you, I'm afraid, Saska!"

Saska laughed, but she was also feeling nervous. The one thing she knew about the dragons of Pern was that they were big. A green would not be as big as a bronze, but nevertheless, it would be large. She followed M'tin and her father into a lift and they were whisked up through what she thought must once have been a natural fissure in the volcanic rock, widened and smoothed to take the lift cage. She marked off the levels as they rose, and then they were coming out into a large hall seemingly filled with people all chattering and laughing at the tops of their voices, the sound soaked up by baffles in the ceiling, but still enough to make her start backwards.

"It's all right! It's just the midday meal!" M'tin said cheerfully, taking her arm. "We'll go through here - G'rat says he fetched food to the weyr so you could talk without having to contend with all the mob."

He led them around the hall, answering greetings, and then they were climbing a set of stone stairs. Saska was pleased to find a thick rope bannister and used it to help herself up.

"Dragons don't use these, surely?"

"Nope. But their riders can run up and down between the dining hall and the weyrs."

Saska eyed the steep stairs and decided she would keep to a dignified walk, even with M'tin running on ahead and then turning back to encourage them.

"Calm down," her father called. "We'll get there in the end, youngster, we don't need to risk life and limb to do it!"

Both Saska and M'tin laughed, because it was one of Professor Freeman's commonest adages.

"Does me good to hear that again," M'tin said, and led the way into a large open space, a space Saska could only describe as a cave.

The smooth black walls were covered in colourful paintings, there was a table and chairs and a sideboard laid with food, and another equally small slight man coming to greet them, and the glimpse of a large head with whirling coloured eyes beyond him as the green dragon tried to poke her head into the weyr.


	6. Chapter 6

I did promise dragons, so here is the first of them. I'm revising this story as I go along, before posting each chapter, because the ending is turning out to be a little unexpected (I am working both ends at once, as it were).

"Professor. Doctor."

G'rat made a bow to each of them, and Saska wondered why he was so formal when M'tin was still bouncing up and down on his toes and grinning that hugely infectious grin.

"Pleased to meet you, G'rat, rider of green Laroth," Doctor Freeman said briskly. "Stop trying to pretend you aren't as excited as this young man, because we don't believe you. Saska, go and greet Laroth."

G'rat relaxed and huffed out a breath, smiling now.

"Sorry! I didn't know what to expect - Laroth said she'd spoken to someone who didn't come from Pern, you see, and no one ever thought that would happen."

He moved to the table and began to pour drinks, and Saska moved slowly towards the opening to the ledge of the weyr. Laroth pulled her head back and Saska stepped out onto the narrow ledge and gasped and nearly retreated as she realised she was very high up and staring out over the ocean.

_- I wouldn't let you fall_

_I know you would not. It's just - I've never seen such a view._

_- this is not as beautiful as Pern._

_do you like it here?_

_- there is work to be done, but sometimes we just go to our favourite place and stay for a while_

_there are some places on Benden where you can say it's beautiful._

_- you haven't seen Benden for turns_

_turns? Years? No, I haven't._

_- will you come to Pern?_

Saska stepped away and stared up at the dragon, becoming aware she had been scratching her eye ridges, leaning against her huge foreleg.

"Come in and have something to eat, Saska," her father said quietly. "Greetings, Laroth."

"Laroth wants me to go to Pern," Saska said in a dazed voice. "I can't do that, can I, Dad? Are Terrvertians allowed to go to Pern?"

"Of course they are," he replied as he handed her a plate of food. "Eat some of this, my dear."

"You aren't the big man," Saska said, turning to G'rat.

"No. That's K'var, the Weyrlingmaster at Respite Weyr on Pern," he replied. "Laroth contacted him straight away, after you spoke to her, and he wants you to go there."

"Respite Weyr? Why that name?"

"Originally it was founded for healing purposes, it was quite small then," G'rat replied. "When the fever, or whatever, was conquered, the name stuck. Young dragon riders were sent there to gain confidence if they'd overreached themselves, and when the dragon-ships started, it seemed the obvious place to train their riders."

"So Respite takes riders from the other Weyrs?"

"Yes, although they breed their own as well. Much like the new colonies should be doing, eventually."

"But not as yet."

G'rat shrugged and looked away from her, picking up a drink, and Saska stored that evasion away as well.

"But you can go to Pern," M'tin said now. "I mean - talking to dragons - they'll want to know everything about that."

Saska looked at Laroth, who had stuck her head back through the opening and was watching them, her eyes whirling with excitement.

"Go to Pern," Saska said slowly. "To do what? I'm a biologist, not a dragon rider."

"There's a lot of research to be done still on Pern," G'rat replied. "We might think we know everything about dragons, but I'd said we don't."

"'Course we do," M'tin interrupted quickly. "We've got the AIVAS records."

"They didn't deal with the dragons. When the AIVAS awoke in the Ninth Pass, it absorbed everything that had been done up to then, of course, but then it switched off again. There's been a lot of turns between then and now."

M'tin scowled and did not answer, taking a sip of his drink. Saska ate some food and thought over what the two young men had said. Somehow G'rat's words rang true, more so than those of either M'tin or P'til.

"Where was K'nitt coming from?" she asked suddenly. "He was on the ship with me and implied he'd been on a fact finding mission. But that ship had only touched at Terrvert worlds."

Her father looked across at her, and then at M'tin, who looked uncomfortable.

_- Sosteth did not like that place. He did not like being prodded and poked by the men in white coats, like the one you wore._

"K'nitt took his dragon to a Terrvert scientific facility," Saska said aloud. "Why? There's more to this than all of you jumping for joy because I can hear a dragon, isn't there?"

"I think you'll find out more when you get to Pern," her father said firmly. "If that's what the High Council want?"

"They can invite me properly," Saska said angrily. "I'm not just going to turn up there without knowing what anyone expects of me."

"Of course you won't. There must be a contract of employment put in place. You're effectively a freelance scientist, and you need to pay back a substantial loan to the Terrvert Committee for your education. Once you have a contract in place, and an agreed salary, I expect the Committee will let you go."

Saska nodded, glancing at the shocked expressions on the faces of the two dragon riders.

"But - pay back - a loan - contracts - we don't do any of that," M'tin spluttered.

"Of course you do," she replied. "You Impress your dragon, and then you're at the service of your Weyr, and Pern."

"We don't get money for it," G'rat said.

"Not in monetary terms, perhaps, but you get food and clothing, don't you? What d'you use when you want to go out on the town?"

G'rat looked angry and bewildered. "I suppose - I draw money from the bank here - is that wages?"

"In some sort, yes," Professor Freeman said gently. "But the dragon riders were never structured in that way, not the way a Holder pays his servants, or a Master gives his apprentice a coin to spend at a Gather."

Saska looked at him in astonishment.

"You know a lot about Pern, Dad!"

"Yes, I do. I was asked to help shape this weyr, and to advise on how they should grow their food, and what they could use from the planet."

"And what's the problem now?"

He shrugged. "That I don't know, m'dear, but you may very well find out, once the High Council has asked you to go to Pern. No, don't frown, either of you. My daughter is a citizen of Terrvert, and abides by its rules. But I can assure you, she will be coming to Pern very soon."

Saska spent the rest of the day at the Weyr. There was a lot to see, and her father and G'rat gave her a full guided tour, from the kitchen caverns up to the highest weyrs, out into the growing facilities, and around the cleverly constructed mechanics of the lift and pulley systems.

"Did you design this, Dad? It looks like that forest-top platform we lived in on Island Base Three."

"Yes, I remembered the plans for that when I advised here. There, we were avoiding ground-based predators, here they needed a system that wasn't energy-depleting."

"Those predators could climb!"

"But not right up into the canopy, because they would be picked off by other predators on the way up," her father replied.

"The growing houses rely on human labour as well?"

"Keeps the muscles in trim," G'rat said with a smile. "We're all on duty at some time or another - I like the growing houses best, but as Laroth said, we do have some favourite places out on the planet's surface as well."

"But you were born and brought up on Pern?" Saska asked as they sat down in the dining hall where G'rat brought them food and drink.

"Yes, I was, but not all dragon riders come from Pern now, although they have to go back to Impress. There's a much larger Weyr on Telgar, but like us, they're all working dragons, if you see what I mean? Helping with the setting up of the colony."

"What about the second colony world? Ruatha?"

"Dragons don't live there in a permanent Weyr."

"Is Benden permanent?" Professor Freeman asked. "I only ask, because although the bronze and browns from all colony Weyrs fly the dragon-ships, there aren't that many dragons here."

G'rat pulled at his lip, staring over their heads, and then looked back at them and shrugged.

"I'm not sure if I should tell you," he said. "Telgar operates a full Weyr like we do here on Benden World, and we co operate with Terrvert. After Ruatha World was found, and confirmed as habitable, the colonists told the High Council they didn't need dragons, except to ship stuff in and out. The Weyrleaders on Pern didn't take kindly to that, and only give minimal support. Here on Benden - the Terrvert Committee welcomed the help of the dragons and their riders."

"We certainly do appreciate it," Professor Freeman replied. "I couldn't have gone into some of the jungles and oceans without the aid of the dragons and their riders. I think - if the High Council could be persuaded to allow dragons onto other Terrvert colonies - you'd find the same situation."

"You could tell them that on Pern," G'rat said, turning to Saska. "Not the High Council, I mean, because you probably won't meet them, but the people at Respite - it would - encourage them."

Saska nodded but did not commit herself. The whole situation seemed skewed in some way she could not understand, but she had the feeling that getting to know the true home of the dragons might help.

"Can I carry any messages home for you, G'rat?"

He looked embarrassed and then vulnerable.

"A dragon rider gives up home and family when he - or she - Impresses," he said at last. "My home family - I've visited them in the past few years - but it's not encouraged."

Saska frowned at him.

"I've read the history of Pern, and I can understand when there was Thread it would be important to give your loyalty only to the Weyr," she said. "But now? Surely not now?"

G'rat swallowed the last of his drink, not looking at her, and her father nodded in understanding.

"Because, still, green dragons Impress males?" he asked gently.

"Yes, because of that. The High Council - the rest of Pern - I mean - they do understand, but they don't, if you see what I mean?"

Saska stared at his crimson face.

"Oh! I see! I can't comment - it's not for me to censure them!"

"Doesn't it work like that on Terrvert?" G'rat asked. "I never did pay any attention - and the lessons were skimpy at best."

"Terrvert is set up on a more science-based mode of living," Professor Freeman said carefully. "Like Pern, there's no religion as such, and although there are empathic people - metasynths as well - a last relic of the Nathi wars - I don't think the Terrverts relied on them, or selectively bred them, like they did on Pern."

"Selectively bred them?" G'rat asked in astonishment.

"You come from a Weyr, and a line of dragon riders, you told us. Pern bred its dragons and their riders to be almost a single unit."

"Outsiders are brought in on Search."

"Granted! But they must have some residue of metasynth in them, to be able to Impress. Some don't? Is that right?"

"Yes, but they can always stay in the Weyr if they can find employment there."

Professor Freeman shook his head.

"I think we're on the cusp of another great change. Pern has found another viable world, and Terrvert is about to form a nexus which will enable a new jump-out point to be manufactured. I just hope the High Council and the Terrvert Committee can talk this one through, and use each other's skills properly."

"I hope you don't expect me to front up to the High Council and tell them that," Saska said lightly, and then sobered as she examined her father's expression.

"It needs saying, m'dear," was all he would reply, and that was the last time they referred to it before she signed the contract and packed her bags to ride the dragon-ships to the home of the dragons.


	7. Chapter 7

So here we are on Pern at last. Quite a contrast to space stations and red dwarfs.

"_Stand by for transfer. Two minutes to transfer."_

Saska put her texter down and reached for her safety harness. She had been reading some of the history of Pern, and singing the old ballads in her head, wondering yet again how people could rise to the challenge and conquer something as inimical as Thread, with its total disruption of their world and the course they had planned for their colony.

Buckling herself into her comfortable seat, Saska glanced around the cabin. This last drop to Pern itself had brought about a change of passenger. From Benden World outwards to the asteroids of the Benden system, it had been miners. From the asteroids through the first long drop _between_, it had been scientific types. Then from Ruatha World to Telgar World and now to Pern itself, the passengers were colonists; mostly farmers and traders. Saska knew there were dragons and their riders on board, but they travelled together in the specially adapted holds of the dragon-ship, whereas the other holds held trade goods. Saska understood two bronze dragons were taking the drops in turn, which made sense in such a large ship.

"Are you all right there, Doctor Freeman? Do you need any medication?"

"I'm fine, thanks. _Between_ doesn't seem to bother me very much."

"That's nice for you."

Saska watched the steward move along the aisle, his professional queries to every passenger being much the same as he had spoken to her. She admired people who could do that; personal interaction with complete strangers, seemingly friendly yet completely professional.

Wondering why _between_ was different from anaesthesia, Saska leaned back in the seat and began her counting game, coming to with a gasp and a gulp of air; the combination of the High Council and the Committee had ensured she travelled in comfort, but she could feel the ache of _between_ in her bones and appreciated why the cabin had been gradually warmed in time for the drop. The steward was handing out high energy drinks, and she took one and sipped at it as she began to organise her belongings.

"_Tetherpoint in five, repeat, Tetherpoint in five."_

Saska glanced at the digital display in the back of the seat in front of her; it was ticking down what she presumed were Pernese seconds. She had taken the precaution of recalibrating her digital items to be in accordance with the time periods on Pern. A year was a Turn, she reminded herself, and although they had had precise timekeeping from the end of the Ninth Pass, some isolated farming communities might still rely on the rising and setting of the sun for their timekeeping.

A very slight judder was the only indication the dragon-ship was tethered, but Saska imagined the dragons standing down from their observation posts, their riders making much of them, and the relief of having made a successful drop.

_- you will like it here_

Saska stared around the cabin; that had not been Laroth's voice, but a deeper more vibrant voice in her mind.

"All right, Doctor Freeman? This way, please, there is someone to meet you, I believe. I hope you enjoy your stay on Pern."

"I'm sure I will. Thank you."

Saska followed the people coming out of the ship, half listening to their chatter. Unlike Benden, where the ship landed directly on the planetary surface, here on Pern lifts led down from what was to all intents and purposes a platform in the sky; the lifts would take the passengers down to the surface. Saska paused to look out onto an expanse of glittering ocean with the distant hazy shapes of land.

The Port was on an island, she amended, and it was not like the rocky outcrops of Benden world, bathed in a dull red light and surrounded by an acid green sea. The ocean was blue, the sky was blue, the sun a fierce yellow. Natural primary colours where she was used to artifice.

"Doctor Freeman?"

"Yes?" Saska turned to the young woman who had approached her.

"Journeywoman Tefir, from the Flight Crafthall. Welcome to Pern. This way, please, to the ID desk. Once you're out of the terminal, transport has been arranged to take you to Respite Weyr."

"Thank you."

Saska surrendered her travel documents, had them stamped and returned, and followed the young woman to the baggage area, reflecting that this at least was the same in all terminals. A youth wearing the same colour shoulder knot brought over Saska's single square box, and both he and Tefir looked doubtfully at it.

"Is this all your baggage? Tefir asked.

"That's all I brought, apart from my flight bag, yes."

"You do know - this will seem rude - you do know we aren't like a Terrvert world?"

"I know that, and I've lived and worked on scientific expeditions. It'll be sufficient."

"If you say so. Take it down, Jegan."

The two followed the youth, watching him jump into the lifts, and waited for another.

"Did you have a good flight? You weren't troubled by going _between_?" Tefir asked.

"I seem to be able to cope with it. Flight Crafthall - is that here?"

"Yes, it's based here at the Port."

"You and Jegan work with the dragon-ships and their riders?"

"Jegan's still an apprentice, a junior. We run the logistics of the Port, and learn the mechanics of the dragon-ships. Is there anything you want to know about the Port?"

"I read what information there is, on the way to Pern from Benden. This is quite impressive - is it all stone built?"

"Most of it, yes. Stone is still in far greater supply than metal, on Pern. Since the mechanised stone-cutters have been rebuilt and remodelled it's easier to build in stone."

Saska nodded. She had seen very little metal on display, but presumed the lift they entered, although faced with wood, was made of metal. She ran her hand lightly down the wooden panelling, marvelling that something so valued by Terrvert should line something as mundane as a lift cage.

The lift door opened and the passengers surged out, and Saska followed Tefir.

The entire terminal appeared to be open to the sky, and the first thing Saska noticed were the plants; tubs and troughs of plants placed to give splashes of colours and a myriad of greens to break up the strictly functional stone surfaces.

Metal struts soared overhead, held up by carved and painted stone pillars, and holding huge panes of glass. The floor was laid with an intricate mosaic which Saska recognised as a copy of the famous tapestry from Ruatha Hold that had been instrumental in saving Pern in the Ninth Pass. She paused to look at the sweep of the floor, and Tefir paused by her side.

"Does the Hold still look like that? Dug into the cliff face?" Saska asked.

"Oh yes, although it's quite a lot larger, and there are gardens now, where you see those bare stone terraces."

"Is green allowed so close to the building?"

Tefir glanced at her and then nodded.

"Thread has gone, Doctor. Really gone, and Terrvert has supplied the High Council with satellites to watch out for any return, or incidental incursions from Thread that might have been left on a stray asteroid."

"I didn't know that."

"Yes, the satellite defence has been in place for at least a generation. This way, please."

Saska followed the brisk young woman outside, realising the port was on the southern side of the island from the angle of the sun. Some of the people wore a knot of ribbon, sky-blue and edged with silver, like Tefir. Their clothes were different, Saska decided. Instead of the utilitarian overalls and practical jumpsuits of Terrvert, the Pernese wore well tailored loose jackets and skirts or trousers, and some of them even wore shoulder cloaks. Saska glanced at Tefir's feet and saw she was wearing brown boots that came up to her ankles.

Several people seemed to be taking notes by the entrance, and there was a flash of light and Saska blinked as Tefir hurried her into a car.

"Reporters," the young journeywoman said, shaking her head. "They evidently heard a Terrvertian was coming, and a biologist at that."

"Why would they be interested in my profession?"

"Oh - I don't know - anyone new would be good for an article and a photograph. We do have newsvids here on Pern, but I doubt if they're as sophisticated as those on Terrvert."

"I've never been there," Saska said. "But I certainly wouldn't describe the newsvids as sophisticated."

Tefir laughed and pointed out some of the features of the small Spaceport. There was no need for anything to take away fumes or smoke, Saska realised, because the ships were brought out of clean vacuum and tethered within the atmosphere. She could see the soaring lift towers reaching to the tethering platforms, and appreciated the elegance and style of the supporting pylons.

"Does the cold of _between_ have any effect on the climate?" Saska asked.

"I'm not sure why it should," Tefir answered. "We're taught that the cold dissipates quickly when the dragon-ships come in, in much the same way as when dragons used to fight and go in and out of _between_ more frequently. A dragon-ship only tethers on average once every two or three months. Do they move more frequently in Terrvert space?"

Saska frowned as she thought about that.

"I don't think so," she said at last. "I know the ships are always full, so I suspect if they have a fixed schedule, say four times a year - Turn - then people would book passage. I can quite see it wouldn't be feasible to have dragon-ships just popping in and out at unscheduled times."

"Yes, because the dragons need fixed reference points in space and time," Tefir agreed. "We in the Flight Crafthall have to learn their reference points as well, and sometimes there doesn't seem to be anything particularly memorable about them, but dragon eyesight is more powerful than ours."

The car came to a stop before Saska could think up any more useful questions, and Tefir came round to open the back when Saska's box was stored.

"This will be sent by net," Tefir said obscurely. "It should reach you by tonight - were you told it would be slower that your own transport?"

"Yes, I was fully briefed. Thank you."

"Respite Weyr is around the other side of the Southern Continent - I think K'var and Lateth are going to take you there. I hope you might visit Flight Crafthall before you leave Pern?"

"It would be useful," Saska said, an innate caution not mentioning her main claim to fame. "I'm not sure even now what I'm supposed to be researching here on Pern, but I'd like to see the Crafthall."

Tefir nodded and stepped back into the car and Saska shouldered her bag and looked around, to find a tall well built man in the most improbable and extravagant leather costume coming towards her. Beyond him a bronze dragon glimmered and gleamed in the sunlight, and Saska sucked in her breath and tried to calm her heart as she realised she would ride a physical dragon out to Respite Weyr.


	8. Chapter 8

Oops! Confrontation already! What is it with these bronze riders?

"Doctor Freeman? K'var, rider of bronze Lateth of Respite Weyr."

Saska did not know how to respond. Should she bow? Curtsey? Offer to shake hands?

"Pleased to meet you," she managed at last.

They stood in an awkward silence, staring at each other, assessing each other. K'var was a lot taller than any Terrvertian she had met, Saska realised. There seemed to be a genetic predisposition to small people on those colonies, but here everyone grew to whatever natural height they could manage.

"Well, Lateth says you do hear dragons, but apparently you aren't hearing him," K'var said, with a note of anger and disappointment in his voice.

"I haven't heard any dragons since I left the ship," Saska replied. "Just - a general buzzing in my head as I've always heard, since I was a child."

"Were there dragons on your childhood home? Where were you brought up? Terrvert itself?"

"No. I spent most of my childhood on Benden world, and there's a weyr on that colony. I was born on a space station. I don't remember that very clearly."

"Well, I've brought riding gear for you, because I guessed you wouldn't have anything suitable."

"I was informed - "

"No one goes riding in those flimsy clothes. Here - "

He held out a bundle of jacket and leggings and almost thrust them into her arms.

"Let's get out to Respite and see if you can hear any dragons there."

He turned away and Saska dropped the flight suit at her feet and folded her arms. Lateth was watching her, his great eyes whirling from yellow to red, and K'var swung round and glared at her.

"Are you coming? _Doctor_ Freeman?"

"No, I'm not coming," Saska replied. "My contract is with the High Council of Pern, and does not include being interrogated by a mere bronze rider. I can hear dragons, I have heard Laroth very clearly, but I wonder if the reason I can't hear Lateth is because _you_ are blocking me?"

K'var looked from her back to his dragon, and then back to her. He took a deep breath, unclenched his fists and ran his fingers through his hair, making it curl up into wild confusion.

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute," he said in a more reasonable voice. Saska remained with her arms folded, tapping her foot. She was aware people had paused to look at them, but no one came to speak to them.

"All right," K'var said. "Lateth, would you please ask Doctor Freeman, very nicely, if she would care to mount and come to Respite with us? Please?"

_- I have been trying, and I would like the lady who hears dragons to come with us_

"I can hear you now!"

K'var grunted and gestured to the clothing.

"Shall we go, Doctor Freeman?"

"Certainly, bronze rider K'var. Thank you, Lateth, I will be pleased to see your Weyr."

Saska ignored the bundle of clothing. She pulled a packet from her bag, unfolded and shook out a coverall which she stepped into, pulled up, and fastened up to her neck, pulling up a snugly fitting hood, before she stepped easily up onto Lateth's foreleg and onto his back, settling herself with her bag over her shoulders, rolling mittens from the suit sleeves and covering her hands. K'var was staring up at her, and now came up before her, and leaned round to finger the jacket.

"What's this? Are you going to be warm enough?"

"This is derived from a spacesuit," she informed him. "It can keep out the absolute cold of deep space, so it should do fine for _between_."

"Fasten these straps, then and hold onto me if you want."

Saska did not hesitate, gripping him firmly as Lateth bent his hind legs, launched into the air, turned, and then they had gone b_etween_. Somewhere in that heart-dropping, breath-stopping pause of nothingness, Saska realised the back of a dragon was a very different proposition from the controlled atmosphere of the cabin of a dragon-ship.

"...80, 90, 100... _wow _- "

Saska peered down over Lateth's shoulder to see the spread of a north facing coastline with the sunlight sparkling on the sea as the waves curled into a cove of white sand. For a moment she was blinded by the colours and brilliance before she blinked back into focus again.

There were some small ships out on the ocean heading into the cove. From a jetty built in the cove, a road led back through the settlement, and a few vehicles moved along it, to and from a wide open space with a long low building on one side of it, facing south, with a tall flagstaff beside it, and a tower at one side. Saska could see solar panels deployed on the roof and appreciated the way the building had been built to take advantage of all the possibilities of solar power on the sloping roof, and wide eaves to keep out direct sunlight. On the hills and plains around the cove she could see smaller copies of the building but with an open space behind, some of them with dragons resting in what must pass as a weyr in this place. Around the perimeter of the settlement several tall towers showed a watcher, and more flags flying.

"Welcome to Respite Weyr," K'var called back over his shoulder, as they circled down. A blue dragon on one of the towers bugled, and Lateth answered, the vibration of his call coming through to Saska's body. The watch rider dipped the flag to signal a rider coming in, and Lateth continued his glide down to the central square where he landed neatly and flipped his wings closed. K'var helped Saska down, and held her hand for a moment, looking into her face.

"We'll try and start again, Doctor? No offence meant, back there."

"Of course. None taken, K'var."

K'var smiled and relaxed, and indicated a young boy who had come running up.

"Take Doctor Freeman's gear to the guest quarters, Vorodin," he said, and Saska shed her suit and handed it with her bag to the youth who stared at her as if she had two heads. He ran off and K'var shook his head.

"I don't give that boy enough work to do," he said with a smile. "He'll do well."

"Is he in training?"

"Not as a dragon rider, not yet. He's a touch young for Impression, but he had the effrontery to sail into the cove and demand to be tested in due course. He has a fine singing voice, but refused the chance to go to Harper Hall."

K'var led the way into the large building which was cool and airy after the warmth of the open square.

"This is clever," Saska said, looking around.

"Taken from the original plans at Cove Hold and improved on," K'var replied. "The solar panels on the roof, of course, sloped to catch any rain. The wide eaves - in winter all the light falls into the rooms, in summer with the sun higher it falls on the eaves and the windows are in shadow."

"Yes, very clever. No one will mind if I take some details?"

K'var blinked.

"You mean - you don't have this sort of building on Terrvert?"

"I've never seen any building like this one," Saska replied sincerely. "It's amazing, how it works for you."

"Well - I find that very reassuring - I'll try and call up the original specs for you. Meanwhile -the Weyrleaders are waiting. Do you have any paperwork with you?"

"Yes. That would be P'dar and Myryn?"

K'var nodded as he led her into a further room and a woman rose from a couch to greet Saska, smiling at her, a tall woman wearing a flowing green dress and matching scarf.

"Welcome to Respite Weyr, Doctor. Do we have to use your title all the time, or can we be less formal?"

Saska smiled and relaxed a little.

"I'm called Saska, and that will be fine, thank you. My papers - "

Myryn gestured, and the man standing by the window came over, with a pronounced limp, Saska was startled to see, and took the papers over to a modern complex of machines which duly copied her details. Studying him, Saska decided he was older than either of the other two, an impression strengthened by the lines of experience on his face, and his grey hair.

"That goes straight to AIVAS," P'dar told her as he returned the paperwork. "The main machine is switched off, but we still use the ancillary memory store."

Saska folded the paperwork away and came to sit down at Myryn's invitation, and K'var took another seat as P'dar brought drinks to the low table between the seats.

"Do you know the taste of _klah_, Saska?" P'dar asked in his soft elderly voice.

"I've not tried it."

"It's the first thing they take to colonies," Myryn said with a smile. "_Klah_, numbweed and fellis. What does Terrvert export to its colonies?"

"We have a drink we call tea, but which probably doesn't bear much resemblance to Old Earth tea. That goes with all the colonists, and then they try and adapt the plants they find."

"Terrvert didn't lose its AIVAS, did it?" P'dar asked.

"No. I think the two colonies were set up with different aims, though. Pern low-tech, high-level agrarian, Terrvert high-tech agrarian-balanced."

"And no Thread," K'var murmured.

Saska nodded her agreement to that, and answered some more questions on the work she had been doing, but when K'var escorted her to her quarters he looked around at the Weyr and then back at her.

"You were fudging it, weren't you, describing the work you did?" he asked bluntly.

"Of course I was. I know Pern has some laboratories, and the knowledge of its AIVAS, but I'll wait and see what people know before I start spouting off about technical advances."

"I thought so. I expect the technical people will be in touch."

"And you'll excuse me if I say - I don't know whether there's enough scope here for any work I need to do?"

"Oh, I'm not offended. The most of the laboratories are around at Honshu, and then Healer Hall has a lot of advanced stuff. I don't know what work you'll be doing. Do you?"

"No," Saska replied. "No, I've no idea, but I'm hoping there might be someone here who can tell me."


	9. Chapter 9

We get to ride a dragon! Yes, leathers look more glamorous than a space suit.

Saska had wondered if she would be able to sleep after the travelling and explanations, but she woke suddenly when a dragon bugled, another answered, and she sat up in bed and stared around the room.

Her box had been delivered not long after she had arrived, so after washing and changing, she had had an evening meal with the dragon riders and their partners, seated at the top table with the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman, trying to satisfy them about Terrvert. If the two colonies were different, people were not, she had decided, and they shared a common liking of music and dance, although this was a lot more free style than Terrvert, the tables being pushed to one side, instruments produced, and an impromptu party starting.

Saska had excused herself during the partying, and come back to her quarters and gone to bed, her head whirling with impressions, but now she was awake and rested and ready for the day. She had had no real chance to examine the room the night before, and was pleased her brief impression of comfortable utility was confirmed by daylight. The bed with a deep mattress and lightweight bedding including a colourful woven cover, a wardrobe, a small desk, and plain curtains at the window were the only things in it, but that would be sufficient for her needs since she hoped to be out and about in the Weyr.

The guest quarters were in a two storey building with its own kitchen and dining area, she had been told, and she made her way to the kitchen to make a meal, only to find a cook already there.

"Oh - you're awake - they said to let you sleep in."

"I think someone arrived?"

"Yes, they did. You heard the watch dragon, I expect? What would you like to eat? Hot? Cold? _Klah_?"

"Are there any other guests?"

"I'm expecting a party of six Harpers in a few days, but they won't bother you much. Was your room all right? Comfortable? Who escorted you last night?"

"I found my own way, thanks. I had keys."

The woman stared at her, and then at the dishes in her hands.

"Oh. I wondered - K'var's been on about you for days - "

Saska managed to keep her smile impersonal as she ate and drank, whilst the woman, who had not introduced herself, clattered in the background. Saska wondered what she was going to do, what she had agreed to do. Her contract stated she was to investigate the biological state of the Dragons of Pern with particular relevance to their travel on and off their home world.

"Is there a record room in the Weyr?" Saska asked when she had tidied her own place, only to have the dishes almost snatched out of her hands.

"Records are kept at Harper Hall."

"Surely not! Surely you have your own records here?"

"You'd best ask the Weyrwoman about that."

"I most certainly will," Saska answered with a pleasant smile, and went to fetch her notator and briefcase.

Coming out onto the street Saska heard the soft _whoosh_ of wings, and looked up to see a wing of dragons going out over the ocean. She stared, transfixed, at the sight of so many dragons, and the way their colours flashed in iridescence in the sunlight.

"Doctor Freeman?"

Saska looked around, blinking away the afterimages of having stared up into a blue sky and a yellow sun. The boy Vorodin was standing watching her.

"Weyrlingmaster K'var said I was to look after you, be your runner, explain anything."

"Very kind of him. I'd like to consult your records, please."

Vorodin frowned.

"Records?"

"You must have lists of dragons past and present? Their illnesses or wounds? Things like that?"

"Oh yes, the Weyrwoman keeps those. This way."

Saska followed the boy across the square to the large building. That must be the Admin headquarters, she thought, and made a mental image of the square and its buildings.

_- you could fly with those images_

_who is that?_

_- Lateth, the big man's dragon_

_yes, I had realised K'var is the big man Laroth said was so excited_

_- no one from your world has ever spoken to dragons before_

_because they didn't recognise the sounds_

"Doctor Freeman? Are you all right?"

Saska blinked back into awareness.

"I'm fine."

"There's the Weyrwoman. You can call for me if you need me, I'll be in classes."

Saska thanked him and crossed the path to the Admin building where Myryn was waiting.

"Wyeneth said you were coming. Who were you talking to?"

"Lateth."

"Can you hear every dragon at Respite?"

"I don't know. I've not tried to make any conversations, only to answer when a dragon speaks to me."

"That's probably the best way to start. What can I help you with?"

She showed Saska the records, the meticulous hand written records and the brief computer notes, and Saska thought ruefully that she would need some time to assimilate the information about generations of dragons written here.

"K'var said you had a contract with the High Council, to investigate illnesses?" Myryn asked. "We deal with our own, here, we rarely bother Healer Hall."

"The brief I have is to look at the biological drift of dragon genetics," Saska replied. "In other words, how the dragons are changing and evolving from the chromosomal modifications Kitty Ping formulated."

"Changing? Dragons don't change much from generation to generation."

"They're smaller," Saska said bluntly. "I know that just from studying the Weyr on Benden. The dragons of the Ninth Pass were the biggest, the full fruition of Kitty Ping's work, so I've been told. Since then, the dragons have been getting smaller again."

Myryn frowned at her.

"I hope the High Council isn't going to interfere with the Weyrs," she said at last. "We are autonomous. Respite looks to Fort Weyr on the Northern Continent as the leader of the Weyrs."

"My work has nothing to do with who is boss," Saska replied. "I have a brief, and I hope to be able to fulfil it."

"Who's paying you?"

"The High Council of Pern."

Myryn gave an annoyed snort and left the room, and Saska fetched out her equipment and began scanning the hand written ledgers, turning the pages methodically and storing the information. The Weyr might have some technology, but she would make a bet they had nothing as sophisticated as the pieces she had brought with her.

At midmorning the boy Vorodin came into the room and looked at the record books.

"Weyrlingmaster K'var said to fetch you for a meal, Doctor. What's a doctor?"

"In my case, someone who studies science."

"Is it like a Healer or a Harper?"

"I don't know that there is an equivalent. Let me put this in my case."

She stowed her own equipment and put the case over her shoulder and followed the youth out of the building, blinking at the strong sunlight. The Admin building had most of its large windows on the south side, she realised, leaving those rooms in shadow for most of the day.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Vorodin asked.

"Not yet, but I'm sure I'll find a pattern somewhere in those records."

Vorodin led her across to the main dining hall again, and brought her to K'var's table, held her chair for her and then went to join the scrum of boys and girls at the bottom tables.

"You've been keeping yourself busy?" K'var asked.

"Yes, now I've been shown the records of the Weyr."

"You can ask for transport to any other Weyr, and to Healer or Harper Hall," K'var said as he passed the dish of meat and tubers to her. Saska put a small portion on her plate, accepted the jug of sauce, and passed it on.

"Have you had to take anti-toxin pills?" K'var asked unexpectedly.

Saska stared at him, and then grinned.

"Not this time around. I'm sure being on Benden for so long has immunised me to most nasties."

"What's it like there?" someone asked. "H'mel, rider of brown Vorenth."

"The sun is red," Saska replied. "That the most distinctive feature, that the sun is what's called a red dwarf, and although it's very old, it's stable enough for the colony to exist, mostly under domes, but my parents are working on food plants to grow in the open."

"A - red dwarf - I never heard of that one!"

"There's all kinds of stars, you must be able to see different coloured ones in Pern's skies?"

"Yes. But red - isn't a colour we're fond of, in stars."

"Oh I see. Yes, of course, but that was a planetoid, rather than a star."

"Quite enough for us, though, in the early days," H'mel said. "You seem to know a lot about Pern?"

"It's taught in all the history classes, how Terrvert developed, and then Contact, and the history of Pern." Saska replied, refusing another serving of the main meal, and asking for a drink of water, seeing everyone else was drinking _klah_.

"What about before the colonies? G'tor, rider of bronze Balith."

"We know much the same as you do, I suspect. That there were disastrous interstellar wars, and our two sets of colonists struck out on their own to make new lives for themselves."

"Is there anything left? Of Old Earth?"

Saska paused and thought about that, remembering such speculation at Uni.

"I don't know. I don't know if anyone would know."

"Could a dragon go there?"

"To Old Earth? Only if you had an impeccable map, or a means of stopping off at regular intervals. I doubt if you could go there directly, from either of the home colonies, Pern or Terrvert."

"Told you so," someone else muttered, and K'var made a shushing motion, but Saska turned to the rider who had spoken.

"Why would you want to?" she asked bluntly. "Why would you invite them here?"

"They wouldn't want to come, would they?"

"It depends what state Old Earth is in," she replied. "If it still exists in any viable form after all this time, and if they still regard us as colonies, they might want to impose taxes and sanctions."

"Are there factions on Terrvert that want to find Old Earth?"

"No," Saska replied bluntly. "It's not something that's actively promulgated, and in fact you can get into a lot of trouble if you suggest it. With the network of colonies Terrvert and Pern are making between them, I should think there's more than enough adventure for anyone, without venturing into such a huge unknown."

K'var nodded.

"That's been much the thinking since the dragon-ships were first made," he said. "Let Old Earth get on with its own life, and leave us alone, if they even remember who we are and where we are."

G'tor shrugged as he shovelled more food onto his plate and called for more _klah_.

"If you want to look around the Weyr, I can give you transport and company this afternoon," K'var suggested, and Saska willingly agreed to that as she left the table with him.

"Don't be put off by their questions," K'var said as he brought her to the stores rooms. "They're curious, and now the dragon-ships go interplanetary, why not think of Old Earth?"

"It's not allowed on Terrvert," Saska replied. "That's one of the few really hard and fast rules across all the colonies and stations. We have what we have, and that's all."

K'var held up various leather jackets and trousers against her, and asked her to try some on, telling her she could keep the set she found most comfortable.

"For flying _between_, you can use that ingenious suit," he explained. "But for little jaunts around the Weyr and holdings, the leathers should keep you warm enough, even if the air is thin."

"Thanks. Is there farmland all around the Weyr?"

"Yes, to the east and west. The nearer coves are settled as well."

He led her to Lateth who wore a double harness, and extended a forearm for Saska to climb into place and strap in, tucking her hair into the helmet K'var had found for her.

"We'll go up and hover for a while, let you see the lie of the land," K'var said. "Lateth tells me you project the most perfect pictures, better than most weyrlings even after training."

"Thanks. I've been told I have a good visual memory - it helps in exams."

"What are exams? Oh - examinations - like the tests we put the weyrlings through?"

"Something like that, yes. Weyrlings and their riders have to learn visual points, I suppose, to be able to go from one place to another? How do the dragon-ships operate?"

"On much the same principle," K'var said as Lateth hovered over the Weyr, his wings beating strongly, their strength and power conveyed to Saska through her legs and body. "The focal points are learned, and reinforced at each visit. They're maintained by a crew so that they don't vary, much like the Star Stones on the old Weyrs on the Northern Continent, and that at Southern Weyr. The Star Stones aren't used to frame the Red Star any more, of course, but they're still useful orienting marks for weyrlings."

He fell silent as Lateth banked and wheeled to his left, flying along the coastline to allow Saska to see and appreciate the diversity of holdings, the houses, the fields, even the flower gardens in some places. Grain grew in some fields, dark green leaved plants in others, and there were animals as well.

"What's that silvery wire fence?" she asked, pointing down. Lateth spilled wind from his wings and went into a shallow dive along the fence.

"That's powered by those solar panels," K'var explained. "Even all these Turns after colonisation of the Southern Continent, there are still pockets of wild felines ready and willing to take an animal or two. Wild wherries can be a problem as well, diving in and taking a young animal if they can. Mostly, a flash of firestone chases them off."

"Firestone? The dragons still use firestone?"

"No. Not any more."

Saska wondered if that was regret or anger in his voice.

_- there is no thread to flame, so we do not learn to chew firestone_

_do you want to?_

_- it might be fun to try_

Saska shook her head and looked where K'var pointed, to the small installation where he told her firestone was ignited if wherries were in the area, producing smoke and a small flame and a satisfactory noise to chase them away.

"What did you use on Benden World?"

"Electricity as you do," Saska admitted. "Both the AIVAS must have been programmed with that basic necessity. There are some nasty predators on Benden World, and on Terrvert Two, there's a particularly venomous swarming creature, rising in population, swarming, and then dying back."

"So it isn't all sweetness and light in those worlds?"

Saska laughed.

"Far from it! Oh - are you going to land?"

"This is one of our favourite spots by this small lake - I've relatives farming in a small way here, and I think you'd like to meet them."

Saska agreed to that, and they glided down to an open field where Lateth landed.

"The hay's in," K'var observed. "Are you sunning yourself here, Lateth?"

Saska heard the dragon give an affirmative and stretch himself out on the sun warmed ground, as she and K'var went to meet the people coming out of the house to greet them. Not dragon riders, she reminded herself, but the backbone of Pern, farmers and cultivators working the land at a much lower agrarian level than Terrvert.


	10. Chapter 10

Human nature I suppose, doesn't change from real life to our fictional depictions. It must be human nature to want to keep the status quo, and not venture into different and perhaps frightening territory.

Saska came out of the guest quarters and stood looking around. She had awarded herself a day off, and lazed in bed for a while, but the sound of Lilim cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, changing the bedding next door, polishing windows and sweeping floors, had finally brought her out of bed and out into the morning air.

A wing of dragons was exercising over the hills, swooping in formation and popping in and out of _between_ in pairs, and she watched that, and then saw the watch rider dip his flag for an incoming message. Not every message came by dragon, as Saska had found when the wire set had chattered into life at the Admin building, and Saska had learned the differences in the watch signals in the ten days of intensive work she had put in, copying the Weyr records and trying to see any patterns, speaking to the bronze riders and trying to get a picture of the Weyr. She had reluctantly decided Myryn was blocking her efforts; the records seemed complete, but they gave little information on anything beyond a listing of food bought and consumed, supplies ordered and used, with a few notes on the ordinary common injuries, bruises and scrapes Saska would have expected from people training with such huge animals as dragons.

The pairs of dragons flying overhead might be training for the dragon-ships; K'var had explained he had part of that training, but mostly he brought the newly Impressed weyrlings to the point where they could ride their dragons and begin to identify and fly between the markers around the Weyr. From that beginning the dragon-ship captains would choose some of the dragons and their riders to train. Myryn had refused to share that information with Saska as well, she remembered with renewed frustration, falling back on the excuse that everything done at Respite was governed by the senior Weyr at Fort.

Saska turned away from the dusty square and made her way to the jetty, welcoming the cool breeze off the ocean. She watched as men came to catch the mooring ropes of two fishing boats. Fresh fish would be a change from meat and tubers, or grains, which seemed to be the staple diet of the Weyr. Saska longed for a meal of salad or beans, but they seemed to be unknown here at Respite.

"Making notes, Doctor?"

Saska smiled at the resident Healer, Balat. She had been to see him to talk about the hierarchy of Hold and Weyr, and now he indicated the fishing boats.

"Might be a few scratches and scrapes for me to attend to. Fresh fish for supper for those at the high table."

"What about the rest of the Weyr's riders?"

"They'll have the usual."

"Don't you advise on a balanced diet?"

"The riders work hard, it's physically very demanding, riding dragons. The Weyrs developed their diet over the Turns, and it's always worked well."

"Don't you think things have changed over the Turns? I mean - life must be a little easier without Thread, and with all the advances the AIVAS knowledge has given Pern?"

Balat shrugged.

"People don't change all that much."

He walked down the jetty, exchanging banter with the crews as they unloaded the wooden boxes of fish, and Saska turned away and walked around the edge of the sand, standing looking out to sea, thinking of the red skies and green oceans of Benden.

_- I have seen those_

_Lateth?_

_- Modeth. I brought you to Pern and I am resting at Southern_

_the flight was very comfortable, thank you. You've been to the world of Benden?_

_- yes, and some of the other places without dragons. They are interesting_

_why can I hear you when I can't hear Lateth any more?_

_- I am not a dragon of that Weyr, I can speak with you when I want._

_Lateth is not allowed to speak to me?_

_- this is something the Weyrwoman must talk about. Come to the gather at Honshu and speak to me_

"Doctor Freeman? Is anything wrong? The Weyrwoman said you didn't come to your room today?"

Saska jumped in startlement as someone touched her shoulder.

"Sorry! You looked far away at that moment!"

"Harper Giffon! You gave me a fright and a half, creeping up on me like that."

The Harper gave her an apologetic smile. He usually worked with P'dar, but would come into her workroom to bring _klah_ when it had been brewed.

"Sorry. Is anything the matter?"

"No, there's nothing wrong, but I thought I'd take a breather, give myself a break. Did you know there's a Gather scheduled at Honshu?"

"Yes, but it's quite a distance from here. Did you want to go?"

Saska frowned at him.

"I thought a Gather was an excuse to stop work and have a good time?" she asked.

"Oh, in the old days, when people were so hard pressed by Thread, yes, I suppose any excuse would do!"

"Giffon, there were nine passes of the Red Star, with Thread falling for fifty Turns. Between them, there were Intervals of between two hundred and two hundred and fifty Turns, and two Long Intervals. I wouldn't call that hard pressed."

Saska bit off the rest of the things she wanted to say, and tried to loosen her face into a smile instead, but Giffon looked offended.

"I do know the history of Pern! I live here, I'm a native of this world, Doctor."

"Saska will do, you don't need to use my qualification all the time."

He did not reply, standing by her side and looking out to sea.

"I think I will go to Honshu," Saska said at last. "I need to consult their records, and a Gather sounds like a good excuse for a party."

"You'd better ask the Weyrwoman then, for permission."

Saska shrugged, but smiled at him to take the sting out of her words. "I don't need her permission, Harper Giffon, nor anyone else's permission. I'm contracted to the High Council of Pern."

"And how are you going to get to Honshu?" Giffon asked with a barely concealed sneer.

"I'll ask a dragon to take me, of course," Saska replied, and turned on her heel and left him staring after her.

_- you are very angry_

_yes, Modeth, very angry indeed. Will you come and fetch me?_

_- S'lul says yes, very soon, and to wear a pretty dress for the dancing_

Saska laughed out loud at that exchange, hurrying back to the guest house to collect a change of clothing. The trousers and shirt she usually wore would be convenient enough inside her dragon-suit, but she would need a skirt and sandals if she was going to dance.

_- S'lul says he will dance with you_

Another dragon voice broke in.

_- K'var will dance as well_

_oh, there will be competition? That might be fun_

Coming back into her room Saska stopped short. Out of habit, she kept her equipment in the space-box she used as a luggage store, and it was beeping an alarm at her from where she kept it in the wardrobe.

Saska hurried across and opened the door of the wardrobe, noting the fresh scratches around the latch where someone had carelessly turned the key. She was used to Lilim moving things around when she cleaned, but someone had tried to open the box, which Lilim never did. Someone else had been in here. Saska swung around and studied the room, checked her clothing and the items on her desk, but since Lilim cleaned fanatically every day, there was nothing to say if the items had been moved.

Examining the box lid very carefully, squinting at an angle, Saska could see where something had been used to try and pry it open, but although it might look like an ordinary travel chest, it was proof against almost anything short of a nuclear explosion.

Saska pressed her fingerprints in sequence onto the keypad of the box and stopped the alarm. She took out her equipment, checked her disks were secure, and then reset the alarm, debating whether to put an electrical current through the box, but deciding against it, given that Lilim would bear the brunt of the slight electric shock. She took photos of the damage and dictated a short note with the date and time, and stored those, before turning to survey her clothing to pick out a suitable dress, packing things neatly into her flight bag before coming out to the main rooms.

"Did someone call for me, Lilim?" she asked casually as she poured _klah_ from the ever present pot.

"That nosy healer Balat was over, wanted to know where you were," Lilim said with a disapproving sniff. "Healer, he calls himself, but I don't see him going out and picking none of the useful leaves my grandmother used."

"Was your grandmother a healer?"

"She knew enough that we didn't need to call in a healer for every little scratch," Lilim replied, wiping up around the pot. "My family came over after the Ninth Pass to settle some land once it was declared open."

"As far back as that? Does that make your family original settlers of the Southern Continent?" Saska asked with a smile.

Lilim shook her head. "There was them that came back through time, and settled Southern Weyr, but that's a strange thing to think about - running back on your own lifetime - like a bow tied in a ribbon, it always seems to me."

"That's - a fair analogy," Saska replied. "I hope your family made a success of their holding?"

"Wouldn't be here else," Lilim replied, capturing Saska's empty cup and going to wash it up. "Us that are here are survivors, make no mistake about that."

"I'm going to Honshu to the Gather," Saska said as she stood up and picked up her bag. "I might be away a few days."

"Room will be ready when you get back."

"Thank you."

Lilim glanced over her shoulder as she prepared to wipe down the table. "You found anything yet?"

"No. It doesn't help that I don't know what I'm looking for."

"There's records at Honshu from back to the Ninth Pass," Lilim said. "You ask for the Daybook of Tai, but don't ask none of them high-ups for it. Go and find Aselan the cook, she's related to me, and she'll give you a copy."

"Thanks, Lilim."

"Take care at that Gather - don't let them bronze riders take advantage of you."


	11. Chapter 11

Thanks for the reviews of the story - I hope there are enough dragons for everyone.

Saska came out of the guest house to find K'var waiting for her.

"What's this about you going to Honshu? Has Myryn released you?"

"I don't work for the Weyrwoman," Saska replied.

"Don't work for her? I thought you'd been brought here to help her?"

Saska wondered if that was the excuse Myryn was using for her non co operation.

"No, I'm here because the High Council thought my science background might help," she said, careful to keep her voice neutral.

"But it doesn't? You haven't made any reports yet?"

"No, not yet, because I haven't any idea why dragons are smaller. I thought it might be diet, but they feed as they always have. Then I thought it might be exercise - not racing around after Thread - but I've seen your fitness regime. So I need some more information."

"And you think it might be at other Weyrs?"

Saska gave an impatient snort.

"Well it certainly isn't here! If these are the usual records for a Weyr, I've seen better stuff in an online catalogue!"

"What's an online catalogue?"

"Oh - just something you look at before you buy something. I don't think it applies on Pern, because you just order what you want from the various Craft Halls, or you buy it at a market - a Gather?"

"Yes. Each Weyr and Hold has its own workers. Cloth, pottery, wood, metal, that sort of thing. But as you say, there's always something interesting and sometimes unique at a Gather."

"I need to go to Honshu to compare some notes I've been making, and since S'lul has invited me, and there's a Gather, I think I might go and join the party."

K'var frowned at her.

"Lateth says you never speak to him any more."

"I try and speak to all the dragons," Saska replied. "They don't answer me. I hear them buzzing in my mind, but I can't distinguish any words. Modeth says that he's not a dragon of this Weyr, and so he can speak freely to me."

K'var stared at her, and then ran his hands through his hair again, making it curl wildly.

"I don't understand that, but I've time on my hands - I think I might go to Honshu."

"Don't you answer to the Weyrwoman?"

"In a way, but I have much more independence than most of the dragon riders."

Saska studied him.

"I didn't ask before, but have you been Weyrlingmaster for long?"

"About five Turns, since my predecessor retired, but I trained to it almost from Impression when it became clear Lateth was good at visualising the training points."

"If Wyeneth rose, would Lateth try and mate with her?"

"Yes, I suppose he might, but Granoth is too clever for most of the bronzes - he's flown Wyeneth since she first took wing."

"You told me you care for newly Impressed riders, so you don't have as much to do with training the dragon-ship captains?"

"I organise their ordinary flights and exercises to strengthen them when they're in training here, but then they can move to live in other Weyrs. You wouldn't think it would take physical strength to move a ship, but we've always found a relationship between the physical and mental strengths."

"That's a good point - I'll work on that as well."

"When will you make your final report?"

"I don't know. I'm hoping to have some interim things to report on before too long."

K'var made an odd gesture, almost a bow.

"Will I be allowed to dance with you, Saska?"

"Of course. Is that Modeth - my goodness! He's huge!"

The bronze dragon winging down to the central landing square was indeed the largest dragon Saska had yet seen. She had been out and about amongst the dragons and their riders, questioning, and observing the training, but Modeth was half again as large as Granoth, who set up a warbling call as the bronze from Southern landed.

S'lul dismounted and went across to the Admin building to speak to the Weyrleaders, and Modeth preened as the weyrlings and the other children came out to look at him.

"Conceited beast," K'var muttered, but with a touch of envy.

"How did he get that large?"

"Modeth is an oddity, no other dragon is as large, not even in the northern continental Weyrs. He says it's all the fish he eats. That's really something, to see him fishing out over the ocean like a bird."

The other bronze rider emerged from the Admin building, P'dar walking with him, and they came over to where Saska and K'var were waiting. S'lul, Saska decided, was indecently handsome, with waved brown hair, strong features, and a smile that definitely reached his blue eyes.

He gave her a little bow, but greeted K'var as an equal.

"Weyrlingmaster."

"Ship-captain."

P'dar smiled at her.

"I hear you're going to dance your feet off at Honshu, m'dear."

"That might figure in my plans," Saska admitted with a smile for him.

"Good. You've been working very hard, for little result, Myryn tells me."

"Oh, this is only preliminary," Saska replied. "My work before this took three years - Turns - before I came to one result. I hope this will take less time, and perhaps the records at Honshu will help."

"They might do so," P'dar agreed. "They have very good star charts there, I remember that from when I used to visit. Have a good time, m'dear."

S'lul nodded to her.

"Are you ready?"

"I'll just put on my flying suit."

The two men watched her slip into the shiny suit and zip it up, and S'lul walked with her to Modeth who peered at her, lowering his massive head which overtopped her.

"You aren't afraid of dragon flight?" S'lul asked as K'var went to collect Lateth.

"No, I don't think so. I came here on Lateth, and I've had short flights on him further into the Weyr's holdings."

"Up you get, then, take those straps and buckle them on. Your bag - lace this strap through the handle - I hope there's a pretty dress in there!"

"I did put one in, yes, and my dancing sandals."

"Hmm. And a few other things from the weight."

"I might make a few notes here and there."

S'lul grinned at her and mounted to his seat, indicated she should hold on, and then Modeth rose from the ground with a jerk that shook her from side to side, rose into the air and they were _between,_ and in an instant of time, barely time to count, they were bursting out into sunlight again.

"You timed it!" Saska shouted. "Honshu is way behind Respite, it should still be night!"

S'lul turned his head and laughed at her as Modeth began his descent. Saska stared down at the hold and its environs; there were fields of crops, large circles of open ground with cottages attached, similar in build to those at Respite, road ways, and vehicles moving on them. She could see the glitter of electric fencing, then Modeth was landing with a skitter of his clawed feet and a flipping of his wings, flinging up his head to answer the challenge of the watch dragon.

"Welcome to Honshu," S'lul said with a grin. "I get more time with you, this way around. Don't worry, timing is allowed in this era."

He helped her down, and Saska shook her head in mock anger, then turned as someone came running up.

"I didn't expect you back so soon, love," the woman called out, and Saska stared at her and then at S'lul.

"My weyrmate Pru," he said by way of explanation. "She wanted to come to the Gather as well."

The woman laughed and hugged him, greeted Saska, and led her to guest quarters.

"S'lul says there's a problem at Respite," Pru said as they entered the stone caverns. "Something about Myryn stopping the dragons speaking to you? You're the only Terrvertian who can speak to dragons?"

"I don't think I am," Saska replied as she shed her flight suit and tucked her bag away. "But I'm the only one who could distinguish the words Laroth was saying. My parents think as many metasynthed people settled Terrvert as did Pern, but we didn't have any dragons to communicate with - what's that?"

She had caught a glimpse of something zipping through the room, and Pru smiled.

"It's Ting, S'lul's fire lizard. I don't think there are any fire lizards at Respite?"

"I've never seen one."

Pru held up a hand, and to Saska's astonishment a small golden creature popped into the room and landed on Pru's hand, twined a tail around her wrist and peered at Saska, eyes whirling in blue and green.


	12. Chapter 12

I hope the switch from regular canon stories doesn't seem too far fetched for anyone? I hope there's a certain interweaving of the story we know.

Utterly enchanted, Saska realised she had forgotten these far distant relatives of dragons. Ting reached her head forward, and Saska automatically scratched her eye ridges.

"I didn't know fire lizards were still being Impressed," she said softly.

"Oh yes, and on most of these southern coves the wild golds still lay their eggs undisturbed. Most of the ones in the Weyrs and Holdings are from the breeding of the Impressed fire lizards."

"Does that affect them? Are they becoming evolved to look more to humans?"

Pru thought about that as Saska took the opportunity to wash hands and face and tidy her hair.

"I think even the captive bred ones are as wild as those outside," Pru said at last. "There's no effort made to keep the queens breeding in the Weyrs or Holdings. When they mate with a bronze they lay their eggs where they like, but of course if there's a convenient warm hearth and a steady supply of food, they'll take the opportunity."

They came out of the guest quarters and Ting chittered at a blue fire lizard lying asleep on a window sill in full sunlight.

"They also like to bask," Pru said with a smile. "That's Chirrup, the Harper's companion. Like Menolly did, he's taught his fire lizard to sing with him. Would you like something to eat or drink?"

"I'd welcome a cold drink," Saska admitted. "Respite seems only to have _klah_ on offer."

"Really? We have a variety of fruit juices, or plain water."

"I'd like to meet Aselan if that's possible? I've a message from Lilim, her relative at Respite."

"We'll go to the kitchens, then."

Walking down the smoothed stone passages Saska could not resist reaching out and trailing her fingers over them.

"Honshu was cut out in the very early days after Landing," Pru said. "You see the full benefit of the stone cutters here, like the passages in Fort and Benden."

"I noticed wire fences, like the ones at Respite?"

"They aren't strictly necessary, I suppose. With the constant coming and going of people and dragons the felines have retreated further into the wilds, but old habits die hard on Pern, and the electrified fences are a remnant of the time after the Ninth Pass when the area was first settled."

The underground kitchens were well lit, and ventilated, and Saska spent a moment examining the mechanisms.

"Sorry! They look the same as the ones we use under domes on the Terrvert colonies. Did you get the blueprints from your AIVAS?"

"So I understand," Pru replied. "This is Aselan. Doctor Saska Freeman, Aselan, the scholar from Terrvert who can hear dragons."

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure. There's cold redberry, or some grape juice."

"Grape juice please."

Pru gave her a smile. "Aselan will show you the way to the outside. You'll excuse me - I've some herbs steeping I really mustn't leave."

Aselan made shooing gestures and poured a tumbler of juice for Saska, releasing a wave of cold air from the refrigerator as she did so.

"How did you know I was here?" Aselan asked as she sipped from her own tumbler.

"Lilim runs the guest quarters at Respite, and suggested I speak to you about old records kept here. She was most emphatic I shouldn't talk to people she called _high-ups_."

"Quite right too," Aselan replied with a sniff of disdain, and Saska could not help smiling at the resemblance to Lilim.

"I keep telling Lilim she should come here," Aselan continued. "Much more to do, more people to meet. But she was crossed in love as a young girl, and reckons she'll never get over it. Me, I think she's made herself queen of them guest quarters and wouldn't willingly give them up."

Saska laughed and agreed with her, and Aselan turned back to her cooking.

"I know what Lilim meant, and I'll put that book in your room," she said in a quiet voice. "You go up that stairway there, and come out on the terrace, they'll find you plenty of records to read."

Saska finished her drink and made her way up to ground level, coming out onto a shaded terrace where S'lul and K'var were seated.

"All right?" K'var asked. "I guessed he'd time it!"

S'lul grinned at him and gestured to the table.

"I found the flight logs of the dragon-ships and thought you might be interested. What are you researching?"

"The way dragons are getting smaller for one thing," Saska replied, coming over and leafing through a couple of pages of computer print out. "This is Terrvert print."

"Yes, I have it logged in every time I go to Benden World," S'lul said. "Dragons getting smaller - you couldn't put that accusation at Modeth."

"No, I know, which makes it all the more curious."

She sat down and stared out over the landscape shimmering in the heat haze.

"Have you ever seen a world like this?" K'var asked.

"No, never. Benden World has a red sun, and I've spent most of my research years under domes on planetoids with virtually no atmosphere, so there's only the dark of space to see, day or night."

"The dark of space," K'var murmured. "Yes, that describes it well. They were in such a hurry to bring you here - I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to bring you in the southern winter?"

"I can cope," Saska replied.

"Why should dragons be getting smaller?" S'lul asked.

"I don't know. They reached their optimum at the Ninth Pass?"

"That's what everyone assumes," S'lul said. "I couldn't say, I've never studied it that closely."

Saska looked down at the dragon-ship logs.

"Then - with the threat of Thread gone - they should have bred true. But they didn't. If Thread was still coming - would this be an Interval or a Pass?"

Both dragon riders paused and thought about that as Saska glanced through a few more pages of the logs. Several bronzes and browns had been taken to H-V-8, one of the scientific establishments on Terrvert Two, but there were no records of any conclusions.

"Can you speak to any dragon?" S'lul asked. "Modeth says you're shielding your thoughts."

Saska looked up at him.

"I'm not doing it consciously," she said at last. "I think I'm so used to the background buzz in my mind I just tune it out. Sorry, was Modeth trying to speak to me?"

"Not really. He can hear what we're saying through me. He's interested in what you're saying about smaller dragons, because although he's so big, he's never flown a gold."

Saska frowned and closed the log books.

"That's counter-intuitive," she said slowly. "You'd expect the biggest bronze to fly the queens, to get the best bloodline."

"My sister is Weyrwoman at Southern, Cesila, rider of gold Rannerth," S'lul replied. "That wouldn't preclude Modeth from flying Rannerth, but I'd need some - alternative - weyrmate, although I'd be Weyrleader."

"Is that why Modeth doesn't attempt it? But there are other Weyrs?"

"Oh yes, and when the junior golds fly, those flights are open to all bronzes and browns," K'var said. "As to sizes of dragons - there must be records of those?"

"Not at Respite," Saska replied. "I've looked at all the records, and there's nothing at all about sizes."

"This would be the end of the Tenth Interval after the Tenth Pass," S'lul said suddenly. "We're 300 turns or so from the Ninth Pass which is really our measuring point in a way, here on Pern. 300 turns is about 12 generations from those dragons and their riders. But Kitty Ping developed them from fire lizards and bred them so intensively - "

"I'll bespeak the Weyrlingmaster at Fort, and see if there's anything in their records," K'var offered. "But in the meantime - the day's dancing is being wasted - did you bring a pretty dress when you flung off in such a hurry?"

Saska laughed and stood up.

"Yes, I brought a dress. I want to see all the crafts at this Gather as well, don't forget."

"There will be plenty," S'lul promised. "And dancing."


	13. Chapter 13

By the end of the evening Saska was exhausted. The two bronze riders had shown her all around the Gather, bought her bubbly pies and redberry juice, introduced her to so many people her head was spinning, and finally led her to the dance floor.

If she was uncertain of the steps at the beginning, by the end of the evening, full dark, with both moons shining, Saska could have danced the measures in her sleep.

She came to sit down, watching the dancing couples, tapping the beat from the musicians on the stage. Scraps and bits of conversations she had heard spun in her head, seemingly in time to the music.

"...all the way from Benden World..."

"...never been on a dragon before..."

"...wouldn't mind it with her when the dragons rise..."

"...don't know if they understand about that..."

"...pretty dress, I didn't think they dressed like that..."

"...thought they were all as weird as a holdless..."

Saska looked up as Pru came and sat down beside her, fanning herself, bringing drinks.

"You look too tired for sleep," Pru said.

"I'll be fine once I'm under the covers. This has been a wonderful day. I haven't had so much fun in years - turns."

"From what I learned about Terrvert, they don't go much on fun."

Saska smiled ruefully. "I'd say that's right on a superficial understanding of the colonies. There's a lot more hard science, so the teaching is more intense."

"What's Benden World like? There must be new diseases out there?"

"I would think so. Did the dragon riders bring back any diseases when they first colonised?"

"Not that I know about, here or in Southern, and the cold of _between_ would have killed the bugs, I'm sure."

"Even when cocooned in a dragon-ship as we are now?"

Pru thought about that, and then nodded.

"Even then, I think, it would be safe. You might have been safely inside with breathable air, but the ship still travelled b_etween_, and that is all-pervasive, so I've understood. The main records at Healer Hall might tell you."

"That's at Fort, with Harper Hall?"

"Yes, over on the northern continent. Bone-achingly cold at the moment, so they tell me, those who can find an excuse to overwinter here."

"She was smiling, and Saska agreed the Southern Continent must be a target for anyone able to get here.

"Are there any records from here that you want to study, apart from Kitty Ping's original research?" Pru asked.

"I'd like a proper understanding of dragon numbers through the Passes and Intervals, if that was possible."

Saska covered her mouth to shield an eye-watering yawn, and Pru laughed and stood up.

"Bed for both of us, I think! You'll stay for the three days of the Gather, will you? I can introduce you to a lot more people that way, rather than you staying in Respite and trying to understand our culture."

Saska stood up as well and indicated a fair of fire lizards dancing to the music played on stage.

"There aren't any fire lizards at Respite."

"No. Myryn doesn't like them, or is afraid of them, or something. No one's ever been sure of the true reason, but any nests the dragon riders find are either left alone, or the eggs sent away to other places."

They walked down through the empty passages to the guest quarters and Pru showed her how to lock the door, and bade her good night.

Saska locked the door as a precaution, and then went to take a detox tab. She had been astonished when her father had put the packet in her luggage, but now as she sipped a glass of room temperature water and swallowed the tablet, she was grateful. Uninterrupted, she could start reading the book Aselan had left for her.

Standing in the room and looking around, Saska tried to imagine how it must have looked when the first settlers had cut it fresh, and made their home in it. This was where Tai had discovered how dragons used telekinesis, and the dragons later utilised that ability to move the dragon-ships from world to world. Distance was no object, she had already realised, and the time spent _between_ varied only slightly on each flight.

Sitting down to study the Daybook of Tai, Saska found it was a copy, the number of times it had been copied noted in the front. It appeared Tai's descendants had copied it afresh in every generation, and this copy was Aselan's own. There was also a family tree, and Aselan and Lilim were descendants of F'lessan and Tai, but neither of them were dragon riders, unlike many of the line. In the lists of dragon riders of that time, a double line scored under several names showed riders and dragons who had been lost to Thread in that final Pass before the Red Star had swung away, never to return.

"300 turns," Saska murmured to herself. "That's less than the time Lessa spent fetching the Old Timers."

_- it could be done again_

_Modeth?_

_- yes. I could fetch anyone from that past_

_why would you want to?_

_- it would be interesting. You give very good pictures_

Modeth must have slept then, Saska only heard the vague murmuring in her mind that denoted many dragons. Hearing them in her childhood was a result of living on Benden World, but even when she had left that world, she could still feel the faint hiss of their presence, perhaps because of the Vector Point on G-Ed-4 which would probably be designated Terrvert Four in due course.

On impulse, Saska decided on an experiment.

_Laroth?_

_- you speak to me from Pern. Is the big man pleased to see you?_

_yes, I think so. Laroth, how could you speak to me when I was working so far from Benden World?_

_- I could hear you, you have a very strong voice_

_can you hear the dragons here on Pern?_

_- only the ship-dragons like Modeth and Sosteth. Is it important?_

_I don't know. Give my regards to G'rat and M'tin_

_- I will do so_

The contact was tenuous, Saska decided, much fainter than hearing Modeth or Lateth, and thinking of that, she wondered if that were true, that Myryn had stopped the Respite dragons speaking to her. The Weyrwoman was certainly unhappy at Saska's continuing presence, and although she had not concealed any records, she had dismissed most of them as being too trivial for consideration.

Saska leafed through the Daybook.

"_...Today we managed to move small stones into a circle. Zaranth is much better at this than Golly. Thread fell over Covehold but Monaco dealt with it. F'lessan frets he cannot fly Golly and fight, but there are other things to occupy him here at Honshu..."_

Saska turned several pages, feeling sympathy with F'lessan and Golanth, who had been injured by felines, so her history told her.

"_...Today we swam with the ship-fish and heard from them of the great currents in the water. There may be currents in the air that would drive the dragon-ships forward..."_

Saska gasped and turned back, but there was no indication of dates, nor of when the dragon-ships had been proposed.

"_...We can build the little ships out of wood and Zaranth can move them above the clouds. The last one was found by a fisherman. Zaranth says she has moved the ships to the far skies..."_

Realising that skipping through the pages would be useless, and time was at a premium, Saska spent time scanning the book into her notator. Occasionally she would stop and read a section, finding the passage where the Ninth Pass ended. F'lessan and Tai were past middle age by then, with their sons grown and with children of their own.

"The first generation with no knowledge of Thread," Saska murmured out loud.

The book continued after the death of Tai, Saska discovered, but gradually the entries became more disjointed, becoming mere lists of events at longer and longer intervals, until at last they ceased altogether.

Saska closed the book and slipped it into a drawer, and then closed her equipment, noting the power drain; she would have to put the collector out on a north facing sill during daylight hours. That would not be far off, and she crawled into bed and pulled the covers up and dropped instantly into sleep.


	14. Chapter 14

Thanks again for your reviews of my story, and I hope it follows canon in the way the Weyrs are still structured.

On the following day Karela, the Headwoman of Honshu, came to sit with Saska for the morning meal, and then took her to the records room.

"These are the earliest records, when Honshu was first founded. Here you'll find the records from the Ninth Pass when it was rediscovered, and these are the continuing records. There's nothing very spectacular, I'm afraid, just lists of dragons and their riders, supplies brought in, surveys and expeditions into the far south. Are you sure that's what you need to know?"

Saska shook her head as she looked around the room, seeing desks and chairs, cabinets that must hold records, paintings on the walls.

"I don't know. I've been tasked to look into why the dragons are getting smaller - "

"Why?" Karela asked bluntly. "I mean, why should it make a difference? There's no Thread to fight, and to be brutally frank, with smaller dragons, there's less strain on the food resources. Clutches are getting smaller - in the days of Thread a queen would regularly lay forty or even fifty eggs, but nowadays fifteen to twenty is normal, and a queen might only come from one in three clutches."

"Is there a bias to any one colour?"

"Greens always predominate, but apart from that, there's an even balance between blues, browns and bronzes. Bronzes might be a shade larger than browns, still, but there's little difference in size between green and blue."

"And do greens still Impress males?"

Karela glanced at her, then at the lists in front of them, and finally shook her head.

"No, that's about evenly balanced now, as I suspect it was supposed to be. If you look at the history, you'll see females Impressed greens at first, then it changed to males - the excuse being that men fought better."

"Er - didn't the dragons do the fighting, rather than their riders?"

Karela laughed.

"You've put your finger right on it! Yes, of course, the dragons did the flying and flaming, but somewhere in those first few Passes it became a fixed idea that greens only Impressed males. Women never Impress bronze or brown, even now, but there have been incidences where a woman Impresses a blue."

"That would make sense, in that a gold rider is always female, so brown and bronze should be male."

"You need Kitty Ping's original records. Those are kept at Landing, in the original AIVAS rooms."

"Am I allowed access to those?"

"I don't know. I'll speak to the Lord Holder of Southern, I think, and ask him to speak to the High Council. You're staying for a couple more days?"

"Yes, I think I will."

"Fine. Make a start here, then, and I'll have some food and drink delivered to you later in the morning. Oh, and if you want to bespeak any of our dragons, please don't feel inhibited in any way."

"I couldn't hear them in Respite."

Karela made a face. "I shouldn't speak out of turn, I suppose, but Myryn isn't the best Weyrwoman I've ever met!"

"Has she been Weyrwoman long?"

"About ten turns, since Wyeneth made her first flight. It was quite sad, really, P'dar's Weyrwoman and weyrmate Glamista, took sick and died, and so of course Panath suicided, and then they had to wait for Wyeneth to grow - she was the only gold at the Weyr. But Myryn had to be Weyrwoman in deed, if not in name, and I think myself she was too young for the responsibility, and hid it behind that smiling softness which is all that most people see."

Saska nodded.

"I had the impression she didn't welcome me because she thought I was a challenge to her with the bronze and brown riders."

"That would be Myryn all over! She can't have them, but they form her court, and no one else can have them either! Drat the woman!"

Karela left to make her calls to the Lord Holders, and Saska sat down and stared at the reams of records. She could hear odd snatches of dragon conversation, she realised, nothing directed at her, and nothing she wanted to break into, but it was comforting to know she could still hear the dragons.

At midday H'rat, a blue rider who had danced with her last evening, came to bring a tray of drinks and food.

"Here you are! What's that? I don't recognise that!"

"It's the schematic of one of the Dawn Sisters, I think. I was just comparing it to the Ancestral Ships of Terrvert."

"Is that what your people call them? May I sit down?"

Saska nodded, and H'rat studied the schematic.

"We used the Dawn Sisters to get rid of the Red Star," he said at last.

"Yes I know."

"And then we started to go out to the asteroids and bring back metal ore and minerals and stuff that's scarce on Pern, and then someone had the bright idea to enclose the dragons in a ship and let them move it to other planets in the system."

"We're taught that as well."

H'rat shook his head.

"I wish I knew the history of Terrvert as well as my own! All we were told was that Terrvert never lost its space-faring abilities, and is far in advance of Pern in a technological sense."

"That's true in part. I think we lost something by being able to land on planets that weren't one hundred percent suitable, and having the technology to build domes and live in them whilst terraforming."

H'rat looked enquiringly at her, and Saska explained about the enclosed spaces.

"You could put domes in the Northern Continent," H'rat observed. "That way, the winters wouldn't be so severe."

"Yes, I think that's true."

"There's a thing called geothermal heating, isn't there? If you closed that in, would the temperature be the same as here?"

Saska called up a schematic of Benden Weyr and studied the contours.

"You could put domes here - and here - that would cover the main entrances to the Lower Caverns and the Hatching Grounds. It would operate like an airlock, perhaps, so that the heat didn't escape."

"Are you going to put it forward as a suggestion?"

Saska shook her head.

"That's none of my business - "

"But we are all supposed to work together," H'rat said. "Or at least, that's what my parents always taught me. Think about it."

"I will do," Saska replied, saving the diagram to her own file.

H'rat tidied up where they had been eating, leaving a full jug of watered fruit juice.

"Bespeak Noreth if you want anything else," he said. "I've no patrols to fly this afternoon."

"I'll do that. Thanks."

Saska turned back to the screens and studied the schematics. She pulled up plans and maps of Pern, seeing the layout of the various Holds and Weyrs, appreciating the ingenuity of a people under periodic attack. AIVAS had been buried, she realised, and memory of it had been lost as the remnant of the colony forged a new life in a safer part of the world.

"Why indeed should it matter, if the dragons are getting smaller?" she said aloud as she closed the records.

_- we will not be able to fly the ships_


	15. Chapter 15

Thanks to Ginnystar for mentioning that F'lessan knew about solar energy. I still maintain that Pern, in this reincarnation, had less technology than I have imagined for Terrvert, but I hope everyone can visualise a certain amount of, let's say, manually operated technology despite the Lord Holders and Weyrleaders still being very conservative in their outlook.

Saska could not stop that dragon's remark reverberating through her mind. She did not know which dragon had spoken, but over the next two days as she explored Honshu she kept returning to that simple concept.

Exploring Honshu meant finding the deepest cellars with Aselan, learning how the Pernese had managed for so long without electrical refrigeration; learning how they had preserved food and drink during the long turns of a Pass; learning what plants could be grown in pots over a short Northern summer.

"Is it different on your worlds?" H'rat asked when he found her copying recipes.

Saska looked up at him. H'rat always seemed to find her, and was amenable to flying her around the holdings on Noreth, his blue dragon. They usually flew in the afternoon or early evening, and it gave Saska a chance to order her thoughts from the work programme she had set herself.

"Yes, but only because we didn't lose contact with AIVAS," she replied to the blue rider, wondering if he was actually interested, or just making conversation. "The technology is the same, and the restraints are the same, someone has to learn how to make the machines that make the implements, if you see what I mean?"

He nodded. "Much like us, I suppose. We didn't have paper until AIVAS directed the Printers Hall to make it. Then, once the youngsters had learned how to use the limited computer power left behind, we could begin to use the Dawn Sisters as a template for the dragon-ship concept."

"Yes. Those Dawn Sister ships must have been too big for the dragon minds to fly?"

H'rat picked up the recipe books she had finished with and shelved them neatly, lining up their spines, leaving just a fraction of the wooden shelf showing.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I don't get dragon-ship training, of course, because Noreth is a blue, but I do get to listen to the chat. I think it was deemed better to make the dragon-ships from scratch, and once the metal ores began to come in from the asteroid belt, it was a lot easier."

"In that, Terrvert is the same," Saska replied. "The original colonists used the shell of the transporters to get out to the asteroids and mine them."

"Are you free this evening?" H'rat asked, seemingly at random. "There's a star-gazing party on the terrace - apparently a rare conjunction of something or other."

"I daresay I can find time for that," Saska replied with a smile, and H'rat nodded and left the room. Saska frowned after him; he was a pleasant enough individual but she had no idea why he was spending time with her.

Aselan, when asked, shook her head.

"Blue riders," she said darkly. "Oversexed, the lot of them."

Saska gave a rather shocked laugh, and Aselan smiled at her.

"You don't want any attention, you tell them so, m'dear," she said. "Did the Daybook help you at all?"

"I think so. Tai and Zaranth discovered how to move model ships, and it was from those ideas that the dragon-ships developed. When that happened, the dragons were bigger. Now they're smaller."

Aselan spread cakes out on a cooling rack, moving them into rows, frowning as she thought that through.

"They won't be able to fly the ships?"

"That - I don't know. I need to speak to the Weyrlingmaster and the trainers at Respite."

"Good luck with that, m'dear," Aselan said and Saska agreed with that as she left the kitchens for her own room.

Opening her notes, Saska turned her attention to the mechanics and operation of the dragon-ships.

Modeth was the largest bronze and always flew alone. Sosteth and Baleth flew in tandem, as did many of the other dragons. Sometimes a bronze, such as Vorenth, would team up with a brown, either more or less experienced, and they would fly in tandem.

Looking at her notes, Saska shook her head. However reluctant she was, she was going to have to return to Respite to test out her ideas, and speak to the dragons directly.

Standing up and closing the computer programmes, she made her way up to the outer reaches of Honshu to sit on the terrace and bask in the late afternoon sunshine.

"Can I sit with you?"

Saska looked up as Harper Belso hovered by her chair.

"Of course."

Chirrup, the blue fire lizard, transferred himself from Belso's shoulder to the table, minced along it and climbed onto the arm of the chair where Saska was sitting, so that she could scratch his eye ridges. His eyes half closed, he hummed gently as she did it, and Saska smiled at Belso.

"Is he always this friendly?"

"Strangely enough, no. He always joins me in lessons, but he hardly ever goes to strangers. He says you give strong pictures, although he doesn't like the red ones."

"Red ones? Benden World orbits a red dwarf sun, and I grew up there, so I never knew anything different until I went to University."

"Is that the same as Harper Hall?"

"Yes, in a way I suppose it is. Now I've finished there, I need paying jobs to pay back the Terrvert Committee for my education."

"Is this project part of that?"

"I hope so. I heard you playing the teaching ballads yesterday. Do you still use those?"

"Oh yes, they're all part of teaching the youngsters how it was in the past. I wonder though, with contact with Terrvert, whether they'll forget."

Saska stared out over the brilliant green landscape.

"Everyone forgets, eventually," she said. "Your way of teaching is better, in a way, than relying on words stored on a computer, because people can sing the songs."

"Give me a potted history of Terrvert and I'll compose you a teaching ballad," Belso said with a grin.

"I might take you up on that! There is a body of poetry about the founding of the worlds, I could let you have that to set to music."

"It's a deal. That could be interesting, to see if I can match the rhythms of a different culture."

"We all came from Old Earth, and both our AIVAS systems stored a selection of the more memorable bits of literature and music from there."

Belso frowned at her. "Did they? I didn't know that. AIVAS shut itself down before the end of the Ninth Pass, so that we could carry on with our way of life without as much technology as Terrvert, so they say."

"You have enough technology to keep up a decent standard of living, and move out into the stars," Saska pointed out.

"Solar energy and some computing know-how," Herat said with a nod. "With the dragons moving the ships, our space voyages are different to those of Terrvert?"

"Very different. I'd like more people to go from Terrvert to the Pern colony worlds - I think it would do them good - living under a free sky like this one."

Belso squinted up into the blueness of the sky. "I take your point, and I could include it in my next report to Harper Hall? It might get as far as a Council meeting and be discussed."

Saska nodded, and Belso collected Chirrup and left her side. Saska watched him walk away, and wondered if her report would go to the High Council and be discussed, or be put away as Pern continued in its own way of life. She was also conscious, as K'var had been so quick to deduce, that she was not speaking of all the technology Terrvert had available, which was only a fraction of the centuries and millennia of knowledge that Old Earth had possessed.

It seemed everyone wanted to speak to her that afternoon, to ask how she was progressing, what she thought her next move might be, even to offer to take her in to the evening meal. Since that offer was from a bronze rider, she refused it with a smile, and came to sit at the top table with Karela and her partner Toron. Neither of them were dragon riders, but they ensured the smooth running of the Hold and the provision of supplies for the visiting dragons and their riders from all over the Southern Continent.

"Don't riders from the north ever come here?" Saska asked.

"Oh yes, in their winter," Toron said with a smile. "Each of the historic Weyrs maintains a couple of hundred dragons, still, and takes a small tithe from the Holders. But with the conquest of Thread, the Weyrs can cultivate their own lands and be equal shareholders, if you like, in the future of Pern."

"And its colonies," Karela murmured. "Our son Laron is on Ruatha World, farming more land than is decent for one man."

Toron laughed. "He has the advantage of being able to send us regular updates."

"I thought Ruatha World didn't want a permanent dragon population?" Saska asked, but quietly. Toron looked sharply at her.

"There's a Port, and supplies go in and come out," he responded at last. "But no Weyr, as someone must have told you? I don't know the politics of it, and Laron doesn't mention it in his letters. How did you find out?"

"I was told," Saska replied, unwilling to name G'rat. "Is the High Council just going to let that situation continue?"

Toron shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not privy to their deliberations, and truth be told I'm not overly concerned."

Saska noted that slight hesitation. The situation on Ruatha World was not something she needed to know about, but it sounded as if the colony was on a collision course with the High Council at some point in the future.

Toron turned the talk to other things and Saska followed his lead, and when Belso struck up some music, joined in with the choruses.

"That's a nice singing voice," Karela said. "You might have trialled at the Harper Hall if you'd been born on Pern."

"Or its colony worlds?"

"Yes, they can still trial - they send a recording of their voice."

"That's useful."

"Yes. If you want to return to Respite tomorrow, I'll ask H'rat to take you? Noreth is out of sorts, and I think a quiet spell at Respite would do both of them good."

Saska glanced around, only then realising H'rat was not in the dining hall.

"Is Noreth all right? Not injured?"

"No, no, I wouldn't ask him to fly if he was injured! I know H'rat has been making himself useful to you?"

Saska sipped at her fruit juice before answering, wondering why the question had been couched in just that way.

"He's certainly been willing to show me around Honshu, and explain the way it works," she said at last.

"He's a good man, for all that he rides a blue, and I know he admires you."

Saska nodded. "I'd already realised that. Thank you, I'll be ready."


	16. Chapter 16

Saska was surprised when Aselan came to her room the next day as she was packing. The cook surveyed the electronic equipment, the leads from the solar collectors, the jump suit laid out on the bed.

"Yes," she said with a nod. "Much as I've suspected, them Terrvert worlds have a lot more technology."

"But not as much agriculture," Saska replied. "I've seen more farming and gardening here than ever I saw even on Benden World. I've made notes and filmed a lot of it for my parents."

"I never was one for thinking we had nothing to offer," Aselan said with satisfaction. "Maybe we'll see your parents here, eh, to take a proper look?"

"I'm sure they'd be delighted," Saska said with a smile.

Aselan held out a small leather folder.

"I've brought this for you. It's a copy, don't be thinking it's an original. It's been copied through the generations."

Saska opened the folder and gasped in surprise. On the left hand side was a head and shoulders portrait of a man, smiling, confident, with a thatch of unruly curls. He wore ordinary clothes, but of an older style, with the knot of a Wingleader. The right hand side of the folder held the portrait of a young woman dressed in green, with an impish grin that seemed to echo the man's smile.

"Who - is that F'lessan? And Tai?"

"Yes. There's other pictures scattered around, I daresay, but that's the one all his family have. That's a late portrait, after Golanth was injured, but when he'd found a new purpose in life here in Honshu, and founded his family."

"Yes - you can see he's had troubles," Saska murmured. "Did he live here always?"

"More or less. Although they couldn't fight Thread, they could still get around to see their friends and family. They lived through the end of the Ninth Pass and into the new Pern."

"The new Pern. Did they see the dragon-ships?"

"That I couldn't tell you, m'dear. But you keep that, because you're one of those he would have celebrated."

She bustled off before Saska could say any more. Saska studied the two pictures and nodded.

"And you two were some of those that took Pern forward," she murmured, as she finished packing her case. Someone knocked on the door, and a youngster came to carry her case outside.

H'rat was talking to Toron, and Saska thought he looked out of sorts and sullen.

"Well, I'll be sorry to see you go," Toron said with a smile. "Working all day on our problems as you have been. Have you solved them?"

"Not yet, but I've more ideas now that I had at Respite."

"I've sent to Landing for permission for you to go and look at the original records," Karela said. "Unfortunately it takes quite a few highly ranked people to grant that kind of permission, so it may be a while before you hear from them."

"That's all right, I can wait, because I do have things I can work on."

"It's been a pleasure to have you at Honshu. You'll have to come back on holiday, perhaps in our winter, and bring your parents as well."

Saska smiled and agreed, although she thought privately that the price of a ticket would be prohibitive even for highly paid scientists.

Saska mounted to Noreth's back, strapped herself in and hooked her case over her shoulders where it would rest between herself and H'rat.

"Are you all right, H'rat?" Saska asked, peering at the half seen face of the blue rider, who was still scowling.

"Yes of course. I'm going to stay a few days in Respite - can I be your escort there?"

"I don't have an escort," Saska replied. "I keep on friendly terms with all the riders because I need to ask them questions."

"But I could do the same as I do here? Take you around and about?"

Saska shook her head.

"I don't know, H'rat, but if you are staying for a while, then I will certainly talk to you and Noreth."

H'rat didn't seem particularly pleased with her answer, he shrugged petulantly and gathered up the riding straps.

"All set?" he asked.

"Ready to go." Saska pulled up her hood and slipped her mittens in place, and then reached around to grip him around the waist as Noreth crouched, bunched his muscles, and then flung them upwards with a powerful sweep of his wings, spiralling upwards to clear air.

Saska looked down at Honshu and thought of F'lessan and Tai, making their discoveries about the power of dragons that had been undreamed of at the beginning.

_- that is a nice man. I would like to meet him and not go where I am not welcome_

And before Saska could say anything more, Noreth had taken them _between_.


	17. Chapter 17

Sorry it's been such a long time between updates - I have been very busy with a stitching project for a competition, but that's entered and now all I have to do is tidy up! So I thought I'd come back to this story and see how it's developed.

_Black, blacker, blackest_

Saska was sure she had forgotten to breathe, that something was pressing on her chest, something was holding her down and forcing her through her own body.

_Black, blacker, blackest_

Saska knew she was dying, that if she did not see light and breathe air soon she would be dead before she had begun her life.

_Black, blacker, blackest_

Saska ran to her parents, crying, because something had bitten her, and they were there with loving arms and the pain of the injection was no more than the pain of the bite and her hideously swollen foot.

_Black, blacker, blackest_

Saska sobbed her heart out and not even her father could comfort her because the beast that had come into the camp had ripped it apart and killed her friend, strewn his lifeless body like so much raw meat.

_Black, blacker, blackest_

They burst into air and light, and the sun was cruelly bright, and there were clouds all around them, and Noreth screamed in pain, jolted sideways, tumbled and fell, screaming, and H'rat was screaming as well. There was something slithering down her ship suit and Saska lashed out at it and tossed it away, tore more of it from the harness, and they were tumbling end over end, and then coming to a bruising halt, and she was pressed up against dragonhide, her arm bent at an agonising angle as the world tilted and tipped her into unconsciousness.

"Is she awake?"

"I think so - let me lift her - try and get her to drink."

"That's better - some went down- wipe her face with this."

Saska gasped air and tried to open her eyes, struggling to make sense of the wavering light, the people bending over her, but it was too much to understand and she slipped away again in unconsciousness.

"Hello, mystery lady."

A quiet voice, soothing, and Saska sighed out and opened her eyes, let go of her feverish clutch on the bedclothes.

"H'rat?"

"Was that his name?"

"Noreth?"

"The blue dragon, yes?"

Saska forced her gaze to focus, fighting against the waves of nausea, and the woman beside the bed lifted her to drink, water, seeming to be sucked into the pores of her tongue and throat.

"That's better. I've been able to keep some water going into you, but you need to drink it yourself. A little more."

The woman turned her head as the door opened and Saska squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness that was as suddenly cut off again.

"Is she awake and in her senses?"

"She's given us two names, H'rat and Noreth his blue dragon."

"I'll send them out and see what weyr they came from."

"I'm going to move your pillows a little. Hold onto my arm. That's right. Is that better? A little more water?"

Saska focussed on the woman holding the cup. She wore a light coloured gown, with an intricately woven leather belt, and a green ribbon on her shoulder.

"Green - healer," Saska said hoarsely.

"That's right. I'm Granne, Brekke's daughter."

"Brekke - healer."

"Yes, Brekke was a healer. You know her name - can you give us yours? And which Weyr both of you came from?"

"No weyr. Not my home. Came to find out - the dragons are getting smaller."

"Well I don't know about that," the man said from where he was still standing by the door. "Mnementh might take exception to that. Even Golly is bigger than average."

Saska gripped Granne's sleeve

"We fell - out of the sky - I thought I was going to die - "

"And you would have done if two of the bronzes hadn't caught the three of you and brought you to ground," she replied. "They snapped you in and out of _between_ to get rid of the Thread but it was too late for that poor dragon and its rider, they were scored through and through."

"My bag - "

"Untouched. I don't know what it's made of, nor that suit you were wearing, but they protected you from Thread - not even a score mark on them."

"Inorganic," Saska whispered. "Dead?"

"You named them H'rat and Noreth, and yes, they both died."

"I can't - get home - without them - "


	18. Chapter 18

Sorry it's been so long between updates! Hopefully I can finish posting chapters quite quickly, because I am limbering up for NaNoWriMo, and it would be nice not to have this story lingering in my mind at the same time.

Someone was shouting her name. She could hear them, but she could not answer. The noise faded to a buzz, and Saska opened her eyes and looked around the room where she lay.

Brightly coloured woven hangings on the walls. Curtains over what might be a window if it were not so tightly shuttered. A yellow light shaded by something green. Light showing as a line under the door.

Her bladder needed urgent action, and Saska shifted in the bed and gasped as she knocked her left arm. A jolt of pain shot through her and she stared at the neat bandages and splint.

"I broke my arm," she said out loud, and as if it were a signal, the door opened and a woman came through, closing the door behind her as if to hide what was beyond.

"You're awake - did you speak?"

"I need - I need to go - "

"Oh yes - let me help you. Careful of that arm - it was a nasty break and made worse by trying to get you out of that suit thing which wouldn't cut!"

Saska eased her feet to the rug on the floor and sat for a second or two, breathing deeply, and then stood up with the woman's help.

"Granne. Brekke's daughter."

"That's right."

Granne guided Saska to an inner door behind one of the hangings, and then helped her back to the bed.

"Can you sit on this chair? Put this rug over you. I'll just freshen up the bed."

She whipped off the sheets, and quickly and expertly remade the bed, shook the pillows and put them back.

"There. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat a _boldis_, bones and all," Saska replied.

Granne laughed. "I don't know what that is, but I think you're ready for more than a bowl of soup!"

"Can I get dressed? In - in something?"

"Yes of course. I'll be right back - you realise you'll have to answer some questions? From the Weyrleader at the very least?"

"Does everyone on Pern know I'm here?"

Saska looked around uneasily as if people were peering at her from the corners of the room. Granne shook her head.

"Only the wing of dragons that brought you here, and F'lessan and Tai of course, because Honshu is their home."

"Honshu. I'm in Honshu?"

"The three of you appeared over the hold during Threadfall," Granne said gently. "The wing on patrol had just about cleared it all, but you were caught by a rogue clump. It was disturbed by the displacement as you came out of _between_, And you fell right into it. I might add, you had ice on that strange suit you were wearing. And by the way, whatever is that fastening? It's amazing."

"It's a form of zip," Saska replied, and Granne nodded.

"I won't ask any more. Let me get some food and a dress. I think you'd probably want to wear your own underwear? That's been washed and dried."

Saska watched her leave the room, and then stood up slowly and carefully, holding onto the bedstead with her good hand, flexing the fingers of her other hand, feeling the twinges of pain from the healing bone and muscle. She walked the length of the bed and then let go and stood, balancing the awkward weight of the splint, feeling it pull on her shoulder muscles.

Her clothes had been laid out over the back of a chair, her underwear folded on the seat and Saska walked with care across the room, feeling the cold of the stone floor as she stepped off the woven rug. The chair seat was made of some sort of woven grass, and she ran a hand over the wooden back before picking up and examining her clothes. They had been washed, but she wondered how this culture had coped with the practically non-iron fabric, and decided they had left well enough alone after making a small burn on one corner of a cuff, neatly mended and hardly visible.

Granne, coming back in with a tray and a garment over her shoulder nodded her approval as Saska slowly dressed herself, and took the triangular cloth sling to rest her arm.

"Here you are. When you're ready, you can come through. I promise I won't let them overwhelm you."

"Thank you."

Granne might have decided Saska needed more than soup, but it was liquid enough to be a soup, Saska thought as she ate. There was a slice of bread and she ate that, tasting the sharpness of roasted seeds in the crust. Chasing the last morsel of vegetable, she decided she must go and explain to these people, if she could, what had been going on, how she had arrived, and what anyone could do to help her return.


	19. Chapter 19

Two for the price of one today. Thank you for the reviews and follows of my stories.

Coming through the door, Saska blinked at sunlight falling across the floor. Doors were open onto a terrace, and she stared around, trying to orient herself from the Honshu she had known so briefly. Everything was new, she realised, the paintings were fresher, the floor less worn. The scents coming in from outside were the same, dust and flowers and greenery.

F'lessan, unmistakeable now she had seen his portrait, came across to help her.

"You look a lot better," he observed. "The arm isn't paining you?"

"My fingers are tingling - I think that's a good sign. Thank you."

She sat down on a leather covered couch and slid an embroidered cushion under her left elbow and looked around at the people in the room.

Granne, hovering watchfully, F'lessan by the open doors, Tai perched on another chair. Granne, she realised, was related to F'lessan, because her mother had been his uncle's weyrmate.

"First of all, we could ask your name," F'lessan said. "You'll not mind Tai making notes?"

"No, I don't mind. My name is Saska Freeman. I'm not a dragon rider. H'rat - H'rat and Noreth were taking me back to base - we'd been at a Gather."

"Not near here," F'lessan said at once. "We've had no Gathers for a long time."

"I know. It wasn't now."

F'lessan straightened up and stared at her.

"Not - now - you were timing it? Then you can give a dragon your co ordinates and return?"

Saska shook her head slowly.

"It's not quite as easy as that. It wasn't planned, in the way Weyrwoman Lessa planned her time-spanning flight, but there's a lot of time involved."

Tai studied her closely.

"Could you return with the help of one of our dragons?" she asked. "Can I presume - you have come back in time? Those clothes - the bag that won't open - "

"How long was I unconscious?" Saska asked in alarm.

"About ten days," Granne replied. "Then you drifted in and out of consciousness for perhaps another three or four. Does that make a difference?

"I don't know. I think I can still open my case. I was studying the decline in dragon sizes in that time compared to this time."

"We consulted AIVAS on that, and the conclusion was that dragons became artificially enlarged due to the bottle-neck of the leap forward," F'lessan observed.

Saska stared at him and struck her fist on her knee.

"Of course! I didn't factor that in, I was looking for other signs, but once all the dragons came forward, and breeding became more mixed, the sizes would have reverted to the optimum. I just need to know that optimum."

She looked around at the three people watching her with varying signs of bemusement and alarm and coloured up.

"Sorry," she said gruffly. "I know I sound self-centred, but I was working on something and my brain doesn't always know when to stop."

"But if you can't return, your information is useless anyway," Granne pointed out.

"Yes."

Saska looked away, studying the room, aware the other three were studying her.

"Why should it matter, if the dragons were getting smaller?" Tai asked at last. "I mean - this is the last Pass. After this, if AIVAS is right, there will be no more Thread. The dragons and their riders will find a new purpose in life, and I would expect them to diminish in size, back to what Kitty Ping devised."

"I'd been promised sight of the AIVAS records," Saska said. "H'rat was going to take me there - but then - there was something wrong - he was out of sorts - Noreth as well - the Holder had been arguing with him, I think."

"He was a blue. Perhaps there had been a mating flight?" F'lessan asked.

"There might have been. It would explain it, although H'rat was angry with me as well because I refused him."

"He wanted you as his weyrmate?" Tai asked incredulously. "A blue rider?"

Saska flushed. "No, he just wanted to be my escort at Re - back at the base. I told him I didn't want or need any particular person to be my escort, but I would always be pleased to be friendly to him."

F'lessan studied her.

"He took offence at that, and then all three of you took off. What happened then?"

Saska flushed scarlet and looked away.

"I was thinking about you, and Tai, and what I'd been told," she muttered. "There's a portrait of you at Honshu - Noreth said he'd like to see someone who looked as kind as you - and he flung us _between_."

F'lessan looked astonished, and then grinned.

"A portrait of me, eh, gone down through the ages. That's something, isn't it?"

"And Tai," Saska said, and Tai flushed up and swatted F'lessan as he preened.

"You must give terribly clear pictures, dangerously clear, if a dragon can choose your images over those of his rider," Tai said thoughtfully.

"That's what I'd been told, once I met the dragons, once the authorities realised I could hear them."

"All of them? Like Lessa?"

"Er - yes - all of them."

"Can you hear them now?" Granne asked, and Saska closed her eyes and listened to the buzz in her mind.

"I can't pick out any one individual," she said at last. "I get a general impression of a lot of dragons."

"There's a wing picketed here more or less permanently," F'lessan said.

"That's cruel!" Saska said, and then flushed up. "Sorry! But to have them all there - seeing what you can't have - but Golanth can still fly a little, can't he?"

"Yes, but not enough to fight. Not for a long time now, since the attack. I suppose that's all written in the history books? I hope they show me up in a good light!"

"Usually," Saska replied. She put her head on one side. "Someone's calling me, but no one here knows my name, surely?"

"Not unless one of the wing picked it out of Noreth's mind before he went _between_, for all time," Tai agreed.

They fell silent, Saska staring out onto the sunlit terrace, the others studying her, she was sure.

"So - the obvious question - how far back did you come?" Granne asked at last.

"300 turns, more or less," Saska replied slowly. "From what should have been close to the Eleventh Pass, except that as you say, there is no more Thread."

"Yet it's important the dragons shouldn't diminish in size?"

"Yes. It's to do with a project - something that dragons can do - move themselves and their riders to different locations."

"They need strength to do that," F'lessan agreed. "I always used to grumble at the amount of time I had to spend as a weyrling just doing exercises to build muscles, the same as Golly had to do."

Saska nodded. "I did mention to the Weyrlingmaster at the base weyr that dragons and riders should still be in top condition, even if the dragons don't actually use their wings for the - for the thing that they do."

F'lessan shook his head.

"You can't or won't tell us what is in the future, and I do appreciate that," he said at last. "But I think you'll have to explain a little more, in case there's a chance of a dragon picking out a location from your mind and taking you there."

"How would they get back?" Saska asked. "Assuming there's a rider with the dragon, they'd have to fly blindfolded into the future on my say-so, and then once I was safe, they'd be able to return here?"

"We might have to consider sending a dragon and rider to the future for all time," F'lessan said thoughtfully. "To take you there, and remain there."

Saska stared at him, and around at the others.

"Assuming you can picture it clearly enough, having been to Honshu in two time frames," Tai said with a frown.

"I can do that because in my case I've pictures of the Honshu I know, and the base as well - that would be a better place to aim for, because I know for a fact there's nothing there in this time frame, and no dragon will have a double picture of it."

"Always a better option," Granne said approvingly. "But for now - I want you back in bed, I'm afraid, because you're looking far too pale for my liking."

Saska eased her arm in its sling, but she had to admit she was tiring, and F'lessan came over to help her stand.

"Don't worry, Saska," he said gently. "We'll sort this one out for you, because we do have people who've travelling to and fro, so to speak, and their advice would be useful. Go and rest now, and see if you can find out which dragon actually called your name."


	20. Chapter 20

Now we start coming to the climax of the story! It's a pity none of us own any rights to Pern and its wonders, but we can fill in the bits and pieces.

The next time she woke, Saska felt she had turned the corner in her health. Her arm still twinged when she jolted it, but her mind felt clearer. She did not see the earth cartwheeling beneath her, nor hear the terrified pain filled screams of H'rat and Noreth with quite such nerve-searing intensity.

Sitting up and looking around, Saska made first for the bathroom, and found hot water in a covered insulated jug.

"Glass," she murmured. "Good old fashioned vacuum flasks."

She had a thorough wash and then dressed, and sat down to brush her hair.

"Oh good, you are awake."

Saska looked round as Granne came in.

"Am I keeping you from - other patients - or whatever?" Saska asked doubtfully.

Granne laughed.

"They can cope at Healer Hall without me for a while! Do them good, to stand on their own feet."

"You aren't the Masterhealer, are you?"

"Close enough," Granne admitted. "But as I say, they've all trained to the same standard, so they can cope."

Saska smiled ruefully. "So we all say, but secretly I suppose we all hope we're indispensable."

"Are you, in your time frame?"

Saska followed her out of the bedroom and into the sunlit outer room where food and _klah_ had been laid out on the table.

"I don't think so," Saska said at last. "I left copies of my notes."

"I see you've brought your case out of your room - does it need a special key to open it?"

"Sunlight," Saska said. "I'm hoping solar power will activate the emergency override. Once it's open, I can deploy the collectors and charge it up."

Granne stared at her and then laughed and shook her head.

"You sound just like AIVAS, and those youngsters who study what was left after he - it - switched off."

They ate their meal and then Granne checked temperature and pulse, the healing arm, advising the use of the sling, and left to go to other duties.

Saska took the case out onto the terrace and gauged the height of the sun, busying herself propping the case so that the narrow aperture for the EBB was activated.

"Spell it all out to them," she murmured to herself. "Carefully," she added as she narrowed her eyes from the reflected glare on the case.

There were no clouds in the sky, she realised, just that overwhelming brightness and warmth. Southern in summer, perhaps, or just coming into it from the angle of the sun. Once Thread was truly over, this would be a wonderful pastoral world.

The case locks popped, and Saska extracted the solar collectors and set them on the table, adjusting the angle.

"That looks like something out of an AIVAS drawing," a new voice said from behind her, and Saska turned to find a middle aged man watching her. He was well dressed, but his face was reddened in the way that told Saska he had recently flown _between_.

"It did come partly from AIVAS," Saska admitted. She gasped in surprise as she looked over the man's shoulder because a dragon had raised its head to the level of the terrace, from the ground below. She became aware of the intense scrutiny of two pairs of eyes, one of them multi-faceted and whirling through many colours.

"He's white - that's Ruth - you must be Lord Jaxom of Ruatha!"

"Right on both counts! And you are the mysterious lady from the stars, Saska Freeman?"

He came forward across the terrace, looking at the case and the collectors.

"Yes, very familiar," he said musingly.

"Did you want a drink? Did they offer you a drink?" Saska found she was stammering, because this was a very handsome man, and one used to command as well.

"I expect a procession of drinks and nibbles soon," he agreed. "I'm only two hours ahead of myself here. And a lot warmer," he added as he loosened his jacket. He turned his head to his dragon and at last Saska "heard" a dragon speak.

_- I am going to the sands_

_- mind out for felines_

Lord Jaxom turned to Saska.

"You heard that, Ruth tells me? We usually use a very tight mutual hearing band, but he says you heard him speak out?"

"Yes. And I can't tell you how thankful I am. I thought I'd lost the ability with such a long trip _between_, and everything that's happened."

Lord Jaxom nodded.

"Shall we sit down? I am deputed to come by the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman of Pern, who no doubt are listening in, as Lady Lessa can hear all dragons."

"So can I. I mean - I could - at home - once I'd realised it was dragons and not tinnitus."

"What's tinnitus?"

"Buzzing sounds in the ears."

Lord Jaxom laughed and stood up as F'lessan and Tai came onto the terrace. Saska was interested to see the two men embrace like old friends, and Lord Jaxom peck a kiss onto Tai's cheek.

"I might've realised you'd manage to get in on this," F'lessan said as Tai slid a tray onto the table.

"Of course. Much too interesting to leave to you. The Weyrleader and Weyrwoman send their regards and said to remind you, you owe them a visit."

"I'll go soon. It might even be warm enough by now."

"Thin blood, you Southern types," Lord Jaxom drawled, but with a smile.

F'lessan studied the solar collectors and the charging light.

"Ingenious. But then I must suppose our descendants will be ingenious. Do you claim relationship with anyone on Pern, Saska?"

"I don't come from Pern," she replied. "The only relationship between us, all of us, is that we come from common ancestors who left Old Earth to found colonies in the aftermath of the Nathi Space Wars."

"Are you going to tell us things about the future we shouldn't know?" Tai asked.

"I hope not. I need to tell you how I reached Pern, though, in case there's a chance I can go back and complete my studies."

F'lessan looked at the case.

"You could always leave it in the AIVAS complex, and hope it's found in your time," he pointed out. "Then you could live out the rest of your life here in this time span."

"Your AIVAS is still shut down," Saska replied. "People study what was left on file, but it never restarted, as far as I know."

"Our AIVAS," Jaxom murmured. "There are other ones?"

"There's one on the colony I come from, which is more technological than pastoral," Saska admitted.

"Could you activate our AIVAS?"

Saska stared at him in frowning thought for a moment.

"It's possible," she said at last. "But there's no reason why I should. It would probably violate any Charter set out at the beginning of colonisation."

"But you'd like to go back to your home?"

Saska looked around the terrace, out beyond to the fields and forests.

"Yes," she said at last. "Yes, I would."

"Right answer," Jaxom said. "That's the answer I wanted from you, Saska Freeman, because it means we can work towards getting you home, preferably timing it so that you arrive before anyone even knows you've had this little adventure."


	21. Chapter 21

Racing on towards the end! I haven't engaged with this character as I did with others in my other stories, but I suspect that's because Saska is quite a complicated persona, and a short piece of fan fiction doesn't do her justice.

Saska laughed out loud, and Tai smiled.

"That's better! Nothing like a bit of laughter to lighten the mood."

She had poured fresh cold fruit juice, and Saska took her glass and sipped.

"So what more can you tell us about the future?" F'lessan asked. "Obviously, my fame goes before me, if you saw a portrait of me there."

"It's in here," Saska replied. "In my case. But I don't know if it's been painted yet."

"Eh? Oh I see! Best not to let me see it, then. What else do you have in there? That we can actually see and touch?"

Saska reached out and flipped open her scribbled notes.

"I like to make a written record as well as an electronic one," she said. "Here and here, I put notes about the sizes of dragons in the future. Dimensions."

F'lessan and Lord Jaxom took the notes and studied them.

"What's a year?"

"The equivalent to a turn."

"Hmm. Yes, they do seem on the small side, but that might only be in comparison with the truly huge dragons of the beginning of this Pass," F'lessan said. "We have noticed the blues and greens are getting smaller already. Benden Weyr has - oh! Great shells! Where's that?"

Saska stared at him in startlement, and into her mind came a vision of Benden World.

"Oh - drat - don't let the dragons circulate that image, will you?"

"Is that the - " F'lessan jerked a thumb overhead.

"No, it's somewhere else entirely."

She watched as a fair of fire lizards suddenly appeared, and Ruth put his head over the terrace again.

_- that is a very strange place. I don't think I would like it_

_- there is a Weyr, but it's a dying world_

_- there are worlds and worlds in your mind I have never seen_

Lord Jaxom stared at Saska in astonishment as several fire lizards separated from the wild ones and came to rest on the table, chittering to each other as they vied for the last of the food on the plate.

"You can speak to dragons as easily as that?"

"Yes. As I say, once I'd realised they were dragons and not a figment of my imagination. I could hear them from a long way away as well."

"Aramina could hear from a distance," Tia said thoughtfully. "But you say you are not from Pern?"

Saska explained the theory of the metasynth characteristics of both colonies, and Lord Jaxom nodded.

"That makes sense to me. But you claim you're the only one of your people to hear dragons?"

Saska played with her glass and then looked around at them.

"I suspect there might be others, since the two colonies - met - but it might be dismissed as fantasy, or illness perhaps. If I - once I get back - I'll make sure every lead is followed up."

"That makes good hearing. I think it might be best if you come to Landing and consult the AIVAS files open at present."

"You'll need more than just your say-so for that project," F'lessan warned.

"I've already contacted the Masterharper, and the Weyrleader has given it his blessing. Will Granne allow me to fly _between_ with our guest?"

_- it won't be a long flight. I will be very careful_

Lord Jaxom laughed.

"I don't think I'll get a word in, if these two start talking."

"I'll try and switch off the images," Saska said ruefully. "I do have practice in doing that. I must admit - it seems foolish now I'm here - not to go to Landing."

"It's seven hours ahead of us," Tai warned. "I'd suggest going late tonight, and coming into their morning."

"Better not to do any timing," F'lessan added, and Lord Jaxom nodded.

"I wouldn't do that. Saska, you might say you feel fine, but your mind is still probably fragile from such a long trip."

Saska nodded her agreement to that, and Lord Jaxom stood up.

"I suppose I'd better go and do the pretty at Southern Hold, visit my relatives there."

"They still don't enamour themselves," F'lessan said dryly.

"I don't expect they do. I'll go after lunch - I am invited to lunch, aren't I?"

Tai laughed and shooed both men away, and Saska walked across to where Ruth still rested his head on the terrace.

"Was this built especially with dragons in mind?" she asked Tai, who had followed her.

"No, I think it was just fortuitous. Don't forget, at the beginning, there were no dragons, just fire lizards. Kenjo founded Honshu and enlarged a natural cave system. The whole planet seems to be riddled with caves and extinct volcanoes. We still get tremors here now and again."

Saska scratched Ruth's eyeridges and a small fire lizard came mincing over to her and peered up at her. She received a confusing impression of water and sand and grass and a complicated dance of small creatures.

"I think there's a fire lizard hatching somewhere," she said to Tai. "Did you get that picture?"

"Obviously not as strongly as you did! Yes, the fire lizards often tell us of wild fairs hatching their eggs."

_- I could take you there_

Tai shook her head.

"You want to get me in trouble, Ruth? And if Saska inadvertently impressed a fire lizard, how would it survive such a long journey, and the disorientation of the future?"

"There are fire lizards in the future," Saska assured Ruth. "I know a harper of that time who's trained his fire lizard to sing, like Menolly did."

"Master Menolly," Tai replied. "She married the Masterharper Sebell - oh - you probably know that!"

Saska flushed. "I did study the history books, and the history of men on Pern is taught in schools in my own colony worlds."

Tai studied her.

"I don't know if I'm glad or sorry to know something of the future," she said at last. "I'm pleased we go ahead, and prosper, and that Thread really is extinguished for all time, of course, but I can't image the step that led us to your colonies."

Saska had that image very firmly in the locked down section of her mind, thinking of trees and flowers and water whenever it threatened to surface. She and Tai walked down off the hot terrace to walk through the gardens for a while, and then Tai settled Saska on a shaded lounger on the terrace and told her to sleep until lunch time.

Saska was pleased to rest and doze, easing her arm in its sling to a more comfortable position, and allowing her mind to idle over the images of the garden, trying to guard against anything else. She had had practice in shutting down the voices and the images and although it made her feel stunted, she knew it was for the best at the moment.


	22. Chapter 22

Let's hope I can think of a way to get Saska home before the end of October when I'll be too occupied with other projects to write this story. That's a promise, by the way, not a threat!

After lunch, a collection of cold meats and salads eaten on the terrace where most of the living of Honshu seemed to occur, Saska asked if she could look around the Hold.

"You've made a start on the new technologies AIVAS gave you," she said to F'lessan.

"Yes, solar panels and such like, to give power to the computing power we have. As for the rest of Pern - I know some of the Holds still, fifty turns on, don't embrace everything."

"What about solar power at the Weyrs? I suppose the thermal power is still there at Fort and Benden?"

"Yes. There's talk of setting up solar farms at Igen once the Pass is finished for all time. Those desert cliffs would lend themselves to the beginnings of a power grid."

He grinned at her, and Saska found she had to smile in response, because she had "felt" his dragon Golanth probing at her mind to see if she would agree or disagree with F'lessan's vision of the future.

"The dragons riders will come south," she said at last. "That was planned, wasn't it? I can tell you without compromising the future, that that happens."

"So long as they don't all come to Honshu and expect to live here! I've raised sons and daughters and shooed them all away to live their own lives."

"What about your parents?"

"I visit, they visit," F'lessan said briefly. "You call them my parents, but you know I was fostered, as most weyr children were fostered."

Saska nodded, and watched as he called up the star charts they had made, the calculations of how the Red Star was beginning to drift away.

"Suppose it finds another solar system?" F'lessan said abruptly. "I have nightmares of that, that the zebedees as AIVAS called them, wouldn't work properly, that another system would be infected."

"The perturbation of the orbit of the Red Star was to take it far out into interstellar space," Saska said, pointing to the calculations on the screen. "The space between worlds is huge, you know, and an object drifting through space would take aeons to reach anywhere at all."

F'lessan nodded.

"I do know that, but to a dragon rider, the idea of live Thread - all right, dormant Thread - heading for somewhere else is a nightmare I still have occasionally."

"I doubt if that fear will go, not properly, until the last person alive now, who has witnessed Thread, passes away," Saska replied slowly. "Then it will be a story, a subject for the history books, for the ballads, but the deep-down gut-wrenching fear will have gone."

"You speak as if you know of that fear," F'lessan said quietly as they left the computer rooms and went to raid the kitchens, giving Saska a weird double-take of the two kitchens overlaid.

"Not with Thread, of course not, but I was working on other bio-hazards, the way a native species can cross-contaminate a colony world."

"Like the plagues that came from the southern continent through the ages?"

"Yes, very like that."

"What about dragons and their riders in your time? Do they get infected?"

"Like killing Thread during Threadfall, a quick snap into and out of _between_ usually sterilises anything nasty."

"Interesting."

"Healers' Hall might have thought of it, but of course, until AIVAS, there was very little invasive surgery on Pern."

"And some people still fail to report anything that needs surgery," F'lessan said, his tone turning grim. "We still have deaths in childbirth, and people becoming incapacitating because the holders won't seek help with serious injuries."

"That, in the end, is their choice," Saska replied.

"You sound like the Weyrleader," F'lessan said. "Here we are - don't tell anyone we raided the cakes!"

Saska smiled at him and sat down to check her case, disconnecting the solar collectors that had charged it fully. She folded them away and locked the case, seeing that Tai had been making notes on the scribbled notes Saska had made.

"Just a few pointers," Tai said. "I think you could usefully look through this line of descent of the dragons, to see if they remain at a steady size. Do you have records in that far future of the eggs hatched?"

"They do, at the base," Saska replied. "Thank you! This will be a great help, I'm sure, but I think that once we adjust for the reduction in size from the bottle-neck of the Long Interval, everything will fall into place."

"I hope to get you back there to make those observations," Lord Jaxom said. Tai stared at him.

"You? You won't be going, will you? I mean - I know Ruth always knows _when_ and _where _he is, but all the same - you won't risk yourself, surely?"


	23. Chapter 23

Oh dear, I do hope I'm not putting all of them in danger! Don't you just hate it when a story decides to take on a life of its own?

Saska looked around at all three of them, Lord Jaxom stubborn and prideful, Tai horrified, and F'lessan wistful.

"You wouldn't risk yourself and your heritage," Tai said again.

"I have children and grandchildren," Lord Jaxom replied.

"And a wife you loves you, and all those children and grandchildren who do as well," Tai snapped. "It's out of the question! F'lessan - tell him - "

"Well - actually - I can't," F'lessan said apologetically. "I'm just running through in my mind the active dragon riders of this moment, and trying to find someone who is flexible enough, clever enough, and determined enough, to make such a jump."

Tai stood up with enough force to rock the table and spill her drink.

"No! You can't upset the fabric of time like this, not again."

"Do the histories tell you I vanished suddenly, never to return?" Lord Jaxom asked Saska.

"I won't reply to that, because I can't say I studied them closely," she said. "But I have no idea who is going to get me home to the future, and that is all I have to say on the subject."

"The loop of time will get you back to your own personal time line, and you don't know the outcome," Lord Jaxom agreed. "Just as mine will go forward into the histories, I hope."

"And if you're stuck in the future?" Tai asked.

"How can I be, unless Ruth is incapacitated?" Lord Jaxom asked reasonably. "If I can't remember the stages, he will."

"Stages?" F'lessan asked.

"I wouldn't go in one jump. I'd time it by the waning of the Red Star as they did when Lessa and the Old timers came forward. Except in this case, it will be a case of determining how far from Pern orbit it has travelled in three hundred turns."

"That can be determined using AIVAS and my own observations," Saska admitted reluctantly. "I've stored several images of the Base in my notes, and the night skies as well, of that time."

"There you are then," Lord Jaxom said with satisfaction.

"But you don't need to risk yourself," Saska said. "Any competent bronze rider, surely, will do?"

"Ruth always knows _where_ and _when_ he is," Lord Jaxom replied, as if that argument was irrefutable. "And he's a lot more mature than the last time we made such a mad venture."

"He's fifty turns older, as you are," Tai snapped.

F'lessan straightened in his chair and looked around at them.

"You can't go without permission," he said at last. "You'll need to consult with the Weyrleader and Weyrwoman, with the Lady Sharra, and possibly the Masterharper as well."

"You think Sebell would be able to stand in my way? I'm the Lord Holder of Ruatha."

"And a damned fool!" Tai cried, and flung away from the terrace, and they clearly heard the slam of an inner door.

F'lessan winced and shook his head.

"I think you could have been a bit more diplomatic about it," he said.

"Sorry."

"It's not up to us, but as Tai said, you must get permission before you risk such a thing. Saska, how far from Landing is this Base you keep talking about?"

"It's below the Western Continent," she replied. "It must be about as far west of here as Landing is to the east. The land's good for farming, and there are several natural coves now turned into harbours."

"And you have images of it in your time?"

"Yes. A lot of images because I was impressed by the buildings."

"Ruth could go straight, except that it would be dangerous for him," Lord Jaxom said thoughtfully. "No, I'm not going to mention it again. I'm going to Southern Hold to visit, as I said, and I'll be back this evening to take you to Landing. Word of honour, F'lessan, we won't suddenly attempt the flight then!"

Saska watched Ruth circle the Hold and then wink out of existence. F'lessan had also remained on the terrace, watching his friend go.

"He's right, which is very annoying," he said gloomily. "I can't think of anyone else bold enough to do it. As he grows older, I'm told, he's starting to resemble his late unlamented father in very unexpected ways."

"Autocratic and overbearing?" Saska asked with a smile, and F'lessan laughed as he stood up.

"Yes! What do you want to do this afternoon?"

"I'd like to see a lot more of Honshu, but I really think I'd be better in my room with a good book," she replied. "That way, there would be fewer images to overlay what I'll need to envision."

"Good idea. I think there are some books somewhere. I'm not much of a reader myself, I prefer to be doing."

Saska nodded her agreement to that, and took herself back to the bedroom they had assigned to her. She spent some time recording the wall hangings before opening her text reader and finding her collection, scrolling through to find an old and tried favourite. At the same time, she tried not to think of Honshu as it was at present, tried to put the terrace, fields and gardens back to her own time, but she recognised that might be impossible; she had been here for a Gather when it was overflowing with people, and extra buildings had been put up to accommodate them.

Could Ruth take that from her mind, she wondered, and knew the White Dragon could do so; even in the histories which were supposed to be a sober round up of facts and figures, the abilities of Pern's most unusual denizen had filled rather a lot of pages. Aided by his rider, Saska admitted to herself. Where Ruth went, the most daring of the Lord Holders went also.

As the hours of the warm afternoon passed, Saska could still hear the buzzing in her mind that denoted dragons. She had been afraid that would have been lost, or that it would be different in a past where dragons were unaccustomed to "speaking" to anyone other than their own rider.

_- we can hear you but you are faint..._

_- you have very strong images..._

_- you are so strange to us..._

_- that weyrling is riding too high, warn him to come down..._

_- there is nothing left of that Threadfall on any lands..._

_- the fishermen have gone out..._

_- must we patrol everywhere so often..._

It was like a party, Saska decided, where everyone was talking to someone else and those standing at the edges could hear bits and snatches of conversation, but not connect them to any of the individuals in the room. She could sense the fire lizards as well, the confusing jumble of images, sometimes from rooms, sometimes out in the open, and wondered if the wild fair had hatched and prospered. In this uncrowded part of history, there was plenty of room for fire lizards, but she had picked up in her own time the concern that competition for land was beginning to impinge on those places the fire lizards liked to congregate.

"Open parks," she murmured, and automatically made a note for herself. "Safe havens where no one can build."

No one had suggested fire lizards should travel, she remembered. It was assumed they could only live and breed on Pern, but she supposed if one was attached to a bronze rider, as Ting was attached to S'lul, they might travel on the dragon ships. That image she put away very resolutely, thinking instead of an image of surf rolling up on a sandy beach, rolling the tiny pebbles, making a back wash and an undertow.

_- I would like to visit that beach..._

_- she can see places that are not real..._

_- true visioning must always be reinforced by the memory of the places..._

_- weyrlings must visualise the Star Stones, always, before anything else..._

Saska decided that unlike the previous snatches, that exchange had been between two specific dragons, ones loaded with experience and knowledge.

She switched off her book and put it to one side, linked her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. It was an unconventional pose to meditate, but she had never had any problem with it, raising and lowering her elbows to inflate her lungs as she began a series of exercises to clear her mind and try and reach an inner calmness. The dragon speech faded back to an accompanying buzz as she concentrated on each and every muscle, blood vessel, blood corpuscle, running an inventory of who and what she was before reaching a state where she could sleep without dreams.


	24. Chapter 24

We begin to come to the end. I realise that in a lot of way this is "telling" rather than "showing", but I think I can get away with a certain amount of that, because we all know the background to the stories and can visualise everything.

Saska came out of her room in the early evening. She could hear singing from below the terrace, and peered over. A group of young men and a few women were exercising their dragons, and she realised this must be the wing that kept Honshu safe. Thinking that, she looked around for the mature dragons, and saw a large bronze resting in what must be his weyr. Golanth, she thought, and on the thought, the dragon swivelled his head in her direction.

_- they are very young_

_But are they good riders and dragons?_

_- southern sends its best to guard us_

_You are very tolerant, when you must want to fight for yourself and your rider_

_- that is no longer possible, but I can help with the training_

_I'm glad of that_

"Thank you."

Saska faced around, and F'lessan had joined her.

"I see what they mean, that you send good pictures. You have a very strong voice, Golly says."

"What will those youngsters do at the end of the Pass?"

"Find other employment, found their own holds. No one knows. At the end of the First Pass, did the colonists realise this would go on for ever?"

Saska frowned at him.

"I don't know the answer to that, I'm afraid."

F'lessan shook his head.

"I suspect they hoped it would be a one-off event, but they were proved wrong, and society had to rebuild itself."

"In an amazing and unique way, with the help of the dragons."

He smiled at her.

"We are being very sombre this evening?"

"I was meditating, on the way things have gone in both colonies, and the chance that led them to meet."

"So long as my descendants have a hand in it," he replied, his mood lightening.

"Oh yes, I can assure you of that."

"Good! The Lord Holder of Ruatha has returned, in a very bad temper I might add. His meeting at Southern Hold was - acrimonious."

"Then he had better calm himself down," Saska said sharply. "H'rat and Noreth were upset and off balance when we took off from the future Honshu, and I've no desire to be pitched anywhere else in time."

"I quite appreciate that. I've told him to speak to his wife, Lady Sharra, via Ruth. That always puts him back on balance."

"It's her relatives at Southern, rather than his?"

"Yes, I suppose that's right." He glanced at her. "Why did you agree to fly with the blue rider, if you realised he was off balance?"

Saska shook her head as they turned to go back indoors.

"I didn't realise it until after I woke here. I just thought he and Toron had had an argument. I didn't take into account the dynamics of the mind bond between a dragon and rider."

"Do they have a Weyrlingmaster at this Base you speak of?"

"Yes, the set up is exactly as it is in your day, but with less - I won't say urgency - because there are still complex logistics to Search, train, and then employ dragons and their riders."

"But there must be fewer eggs in a clutch?"

"At the moment, yes. That's another question I need to address - what did Kitty Ping engineer for egg clutches."

Tai had been pouring drinks for them, and Lord Jaxom came into the room and went across to her, took her hand and kissed it.

"I have to apologise to you," he said. Tai shook her head.

"And I to you! But you caught me completely off balance with your bold assertion it must be you going into the future."

"And coming back," he reminded her. "Lady Sharra also says I have to apologise."

Tai laughed. "And of course I see you quaking in your boots at the thought of her displeasure!"

They toasted the absent Lady Holder, and then came to the terrace to look out at the sinking sun.

"If you would collect your case, and some flying gear?"

"Did you completely tear my flying suit?"

"The front fastening took a mauling," Tai admitted. "It certainly doesn't close as well as it did before! I've sorted out some leathers for you that should fit."

"That would be best, then."

Saska found it awkward to move in the heavy leather gear, but once she was safely on Ruth's back, with her case strapped to her front, she forgot about it as the white dragon rose into the air. Saska could feel powerful muscles moving smoothly, and there was an instant of non-being, the utter blindness of _between_, before they came out into an early morning with mist coiling from the warming earth and forest.

Looking down, Saska realised she had not been to Landing in her own time, only seen brief pictures of it which she edited out as she stared at the complex of buildings and shuttles that had been covered by the ash from the gigantic explosion that had started the colonists running north.

Ruth banked lazily and gave her a full view of the place before he back winged and came down to land, raising little puffs of dust. Two fairs of fire lizards immediately popped into view and began to dance around him.

"They always do that," Lord Jaxom said as he helped Saska dismount. "Wild or Impressed, they always appear when he does."

"Those look wild - don't you mark the Impressed ones?"

"Yes we do. I wonder - if they know - that - " he jerked a thumb upwards. "Is on the way out? If they're going to breed and overpopulate?"

"I doubt it, if the natural balance of wild wherries and other predators is maintained. It's only dragons, watch-whers and people that have risen above the natural balance, here and - elsewhere."

"You speak as if from experience," he said as he led her to a building where they could leave their flying gear. Ruth had found a sandy hollow and was stretched out in the early morning sunshine, attended by fire lizards.

Two men came to meet them as they emerged, bowing to Lord Jaxom.

"We had word you were on your way, m'lord. The necessary clearances have come through."

"Thank you. This is Master Saska Freeman."

They bowed as respectfully, and led the way to another larger building.

"There's two journeymen to help you," one said. "Both from Printer Hall, but they show some adeptness in the computer codes AIVAS left us."

"That's good. Once we've done our work, I plan to show Master Saska a little bit of the complex, and perhaps go as far as the mountain."

They nodded, completely uninterested, Saska was amused to note. Lord Jaxom pushed open the door of the main building and showed her through, and Saska took a moment to orient herself.

This AIVAS had been closed down for centuries, she reminded herself. Left on a trickle of stand-by power until the dragonriders - including this dragonrider - had found it again. Once the solar panels were exposed, the AIVAS had charged up again and begun its work of clearing Thread from the skies of Pern.

"This is the main room."

Saska stared at the main screen. Dark, except for the flashing green light in the corner and the words inscribed across the bottom _And a time to every purpose under heaven._

"That's all that was left," Lord Jaxom said regretfully. "Masterharper Robinton and his fire lizard were found in here."

"There must be secondary installations you can use?"

"Yes, with useful information for getting back the limited technology the Charter set out for the colonists to use. Hopefully, going forward, that will be enough."

Saska did not comment on that, following him to the working section where two journeymen came to their feet and bowed awkwardly.

"This is Master Saska Freeman," Lord Jaxom said briskly. "You're to help her all you can, to understand the original purposes of Kitty Ping."

"We've been told that, m'lord. This is Tyron and I'm called Clar. We took the liberty of bringing those records to the front - can you operate a computer, Master?"

Saska nodded, surveying the antiquated equipment in front of her. Respite Weyr had the latest equipment, but it was all descended from these very basic modules.

Lord Jaxom took a seat and Saska put her case down and opened it, hoping she had charged it sufficiently. There were no connectors she could discern, so she must operate the two systems as stand-alones, she decided as she watched Tyron call up Kitty Ping's research modules.

"This isn't very well understood," Tyron said apologetically. "We've had some success with the written notes, but the genetic coding, as she called it, is difficult to understand."

"I appreciate that," Saska replied, scanning the coding. "I'll just make a copy of that, if I may, into my own programmes?"

Tyron glanced at Clar, who looked uncertain.

"Is that going to be allowed, m'lord?"

"Yes. Master Saska is to be allowed to work through the genetic coding as you call it, to solve a problem."

Saska rapidly typed in the codes and saved them, and then became absorbed in the work, occasionally asking Tyron and Clar to help her find files. Tyron, she decided, was more adept and more open, Clar was at best a plodder, but whatever she gave him to copy, he did accurately.

"That's it," Tyron said suddenly. "Look there! That sequence and yours match exactly!"

"You're right. That's the overlap I've been looking for. The optimum size for the dragons - and I don't think there's going to be any worries for the foreseeable future, in any of that."

She sat back, staring at the screen, at the notes they had been making.

"Is all this stored?" she asked, waving at the screen. "Kitty Ping's notes and all of this? Is it backed up anywhere?"

Tyron stared doubtfully at her.

"Backed up?"

"Is there a secondary system? Disks? Anything at all?"

"We print it out - is that sufficient? There are several computers elsewhere - there's one at Honshu."

"I don't think it contains all this information," Lord Jaxom said. "I've never heard F'Lessan refer to it."

"It should be copied and put onto another computer," Saska said firmly. "That way, if anything happened to either computer, the information isn't lost."

"Disks - there's some mention of disks in this file," Tyron said, and called it up. Saska scanned it.

"Yes, this is the process. Hmm. AIVAS has a secondary facility - but it's not been accessed since it was shut down. You need to study this protocol - and that one - " she pointed at the screen. "And follow them to back up any work you've been doing. This is, I might add, a very sophisticated system, as you would expect."

Tyron had been staring at her, but Clar looked across at Lord Jaxom.

"Will that be permitted, m'lord?"

"I'll put it to the High Council, but I would think it should be done sooner rather than later," he replied. "Thank you for pointing it out, Master Saska."

"My pleasure," she replied, folding the notes she had scribbled, checking the files were stored safely in her computer. "I hope both of you progress to Master's status."

They bobbed awkward bows, and Lord Jaxom held the door open for her to come out into the daylight. Saska yawned and hurriedly put a hand over her mouth.

"Yes, and we would normally be asleep," Lord Jaxom said with a smile.

"Unless we'd been partying at a Gather."

"With bubbly pies. Did those survive the future?"

"Indeed they did. I love bubbly pies!"

He laughed. "Then we'll go and find some, have something to eat, and go and survey and plot the Red Star's fading image to give us some pointers for the jump."


End file.
